Palaeoenvironmental sequences surrounding Border Cave, South Africa, and review of conditions during middle and later stone age occupation

Abstract

As a result of selective anthropogenic accumulation of plant and faunal remains in the sedimentary record at Border Cave, palaeoclimatological records at the site can only be broadly interpreted and cannot be reconstructed with any precision. To aid environmental reconstructions spanning the sedimentary record, we review published climate change proxy records from both marine and terrestrial archives within 500 km in the surrounding the summer rainfall region of the site to derive the history of environmental change. These published records, which show supporting evidence between the marine and terrestrial sequences, of which the former is more continuous, suggest that frequent environmental changes on a millennial scale involved fluctuations in temperature, seasonality, and moisture conditions to which the human occupants of the cave must have had to adapt continuously, e.g., cooler, windy climates, and more open vegetation during Marine Isotope Stage 2. Pollen previously extracted from the Border Cave deposits showed limited potential for climate reconstruction, but further research and comprehensive sampling of the sedimentary succession may potentially provide additional information on local environments to complement the existing palaeobotanical data.