About this blog

For many years I promised to start a blog with which to share information with anyone interested in the Stone Age history of Stellenbosch, as the lithic artifacts are literally scattered everywhere. On most sidewalks people go about trampling on these pieces of history without sparing a glance, those who do so tend to make assumptions without bothering to enrich their knowledge about the subject. On numerous occasions I had to listen patiently to self appointed experts calling Acheulean hand-axes 'Boesmanklippe ???'. So here is my personal blog with which I will hopefully answer a number of common questions, as well as hopefully spark informative conversations. All artifacts in my collection are fully recorded and documented regarding time, place and context of discovery and they all were removed from areas where they otherwise would have been trucked away and either disposed of or processed as building gravel etc. (during municipal excavation, roadworks, digging of foundationworks for buildings).

The Middle Stone Age

These artifacts represent the Middle Stone Age in Southern Africa (250 000- 21 000 years ago) that is dominated by flake based formal tools rather than the core based formal tools of the Acheulean. Some of these have the bulb of percussion reduced to facilitate fixing to a haft. Presently, the oldest stone spear tips were believed to have been discovered at Kathu Pan 1. Researchers managed to put forward a good case in favour of those pointed blades being used in such a fashion 500 000 years ago. (Please correct this if I missed more recent publications). The artifacts in featured in the first picture are from Stellenbosch, while the rest are from the Klein Karoo.