Further human fossils from the Middle Stone Age deposits of Die Kelders Cave 1, Western Cape Province, South Africa

Abstract

Southern African Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites that date to Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 6–3 have featured prominently in discussions about the emergence of modern human behavior and morphology. In large measure, these sites have been emphasized because of the archaeological debris that they contain (e.g., Deacon, 1992, 2001; Klein, 2001; Henshilwood et al., 2002, 2011; Henshilwood and Marean, 2003; Klein et al., 2004; Marean et al., 2007; Conard, 2008; Wurz, 2008; Wadley et al., 2009; Texier et al., 2010; Vanhaeren et al., 2013; Marean, 2015). Although 15 sites from within this temporal span preserve human remains, these are largely in the form of isolated teeth and small cranial and/or postcranial fragments (Table 1) (Grine, 2016). Klasies River Main Site is by far the richest among them, with nearly 50 human fossils spread across three stratigraphic members that span some 40,000 years (Grine et al., 2017). Die Kelders Cave 1 is the second richest site, having yielded 27 specimens that have been published to date (Grine, 2000). In view of the relative paucity of human remains from the MSA of southern and, indeed, sub-Saharan Africa (Grine, 2016), every discovery is worthy of documentation. We here report on three additional human specimens from the MSA deposits of Die Kelders Cave 1.