Abstract
Boomplaas Cave, South Africa, contains a rich archaeological record,
with evidence of human occupation from approximately 66,000 years ago until the
protohistoric period. Notwithstanding a long history of research at the site, its existing
chronology can benefit from revision. Many of the site’s members are currently
delimited by only a single conventional radiocarbon date and some of the existing dates
were measured on materials now known to be unsuitable for radiocarbon dating. Here
we present the results of an ongoing effort to redate key late/terminal Pleistocene
sequences in southern Africa. This paper presents a Bayesian-modelled radiocarbon
chronology for the late/terminal Pleistocene horizons at Boomplaas. Our model
incorporates previously published radiocarbon dates as well as new accelerator mass
spectrometry ages. We also present archaeological evidence to examine in greater detail
than was previously possible the nature of occupation patterning across the
late/terminal Pleistocene and to assess technological change across two of the site’s
Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) members. The new dates and archaeological data
confirm that the site was occupied in a series of low intensity events in the early LGM
and immediately thereafter. The site was occupied intensively in the terminal
Pleistocene in line with major changes in palaeoenvironments and sea-level
fluctuations. The lithic data show the use of variable technological strategies in contexts
of shifting mobility and site occupation patterns. Our discussion informs upon huntergatherer
behavioural variability that did not, and should not be expected to, reflect the
strategies adopted and adapted by a handful of well-known arid-zone hunter-gatherers
in the twentieth-century Kalahari.