Exotic Minerals or Ostrich Gastroliths? An Alternative Explanation for Some Evidence of Hominin ‘Non-Utilitarian Behavior’ at Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa

Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa.

The ability to control fire was a crucial turning point in human evolution, but the question when hominins first developed this ability still remains. Here we show that micromorphological and Fourier transform infrared microspectroscopy (mFTIR) analyses of intact sediments at the site of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa, provide unambiguous evidence--in the form of burned b...

Radiometric dating of the Earlier Stone Age sequence in excavation I at Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa: preliminary results.

We present here the results of 44 paleomagnetic measurements, and single cosmogenic burial and optically stimulated luminescence ages for the Earlier Stone Age deposits from Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape, South Africa. The resulting paleomagnetic sequence: N>R>N>R>N constrains the Earlier Stone Age strata in this part of the site to between approximately 0.78-1.96 Ma. A single cosmogenic date ...

The Oldowan horizon in Wonderwerk Cave (South Africa): archaeological, geological, paleontological and paleoclimatic evidence.

Geological and taphonomic context for the new hominin species Homo naledi from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa

We describe the physical context of the Dinaledi Chamber within the Rising Star cave, South Africa, which contains the fossils of Homo naledi. Approximately 1550 specimens of hominin remains have been recovered from at least 15 individuals, representing a small portion of the total fossil content. Macro-vertebrate fossils are exclusively H. naledi, and occur within clay-rich sediments derived f...

The Earlier Stone Age Lithic Assemblage from Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape Province, South Africa

The site of Wonderwerk Cave, located in the Northern Cape Province between the towns of Danielskuil and Kuruman, preserves an extraordinary sequence that spans close to 2 million years of hominin activity (see Chazan and Horwitz, this volume, for an overview of the site). The earliest phases of occupation have only been recovered in Excavation 1 near the front of the cave in excavations carried...