Sibudu Cave, KwaZulu-Natal: Background to the excavations of Middle Stone Age and Iron Age occupations

Introduction Sibudu Cave, approximately 40 km north of Durban and about 15 km inland of the ocean (Fig. 1), is perched on a forested cliff overlooking the Tongati River, northern KwaZulu-Natal. The site is significant because it has a deep, well-dated Middle Stone Age (MSA) sequence and good organic preservation. It is particularly suitable for optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating because of the brightness and size of the quartz grains in its deposits. The deposits themselves have clear stratigraphy and preserve hearth structures (Schiegl et al., this issue). The good organic preservation allows for analyses of charcoal, seeds and bone and these, in turn, permit environmental reconstructions of the period between about 26 000 and 62 000 years ago. Vegetation changes are apparent from the charcoal (Allott, this issue) and seed studies (Wadley, this issue), and faunal analysis (Plug, this issue) reveals that there was a rich and diverse animal population in the area. The cave occupants were clearly skilled hunters for there is little evidence that non-human predators contributed bone to the archaeologically recovered sample. Cultural material from Sibudu includes a huge collection of late MSA stone tools and rare pieces of worked bone, one of which has been directly dated (Cain, this issue). Residue analysis on a large sample of the stone tools shows that the cave occupants processed much plant material and used individual tools for multiple tasks (Williamson, this issue). The excavations are ongoing and the papers presented here do not, therefore, provide the last word on Sibudu Cave. New excavations conducted since completing the analyses communicated in this issue have uncovered a long Howiesons Poort occupation in the deeper, older deposits of the site and there is no indication that bedrock will be reached soon.