Comparison of Holocene temperature data (Boomplaas Cave) and oxygen isotope data (Cango Caves)

Abstract

Boomplaas Cave is situated near the town of Oudtshoorn in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. It was excavated by Hilary Deacon in the 1970s, yielding not only Late Quaternary artefacts that were of archaeological importance but also fossils of rodents and insectivores (analysed by Margaret Avery) as well as bovids and equids (analysed by Richard Klein) that were important for the reconstruction of palaeoenvironments in the context of changes in climate within part of the Late Pleistocene (12 000-80 000 years BP) and Holocene (younger than 12 000 years BP). Also of palaeoclimatic importance is a stalagmite from the adjacent Cango Caves, analysed by John Vogel and Siep Talma. In 1992, Talma and Vogel used a transfer function to estimate Holocene temperatures from oxygen isotope data from the Cango speleothem. Their basic oxygen isotope data (Figure 1) can be compared to temperature estimates obtained from Thackeray's multivariate analysis of fossil rodents and insectivores represented in the late Quaternary sequence from Boomplaas Cave (Table 1). Here, for the first time, a comparison is made between the results obtained by Talma and Vogel with those obtained by Thackeray, both of which relate to temperature but use independent sources of data.