The Rietputs 15 site and Early Acheulean in South Africa

Abstract

South Africa has a rich record of Acheulean sites, but the Early Acheulean is thus far limited to a handful of secondary context sites. These are in the Cradle of Humankind (ca 1.7 to 1.0 Ma) in Gauteng Province in the northeast and in two site complexes in the Northern Cape Province in the interior of the country. This paper describes the typology and technology of an assemblage from Rietputs 15, Northern Cape Province, where burial dating with cosmogenic nuclides has demonstrated the first Early Acheulean assemblages beyond Gauteng Province (Gibbon et al., 2009). The assemblage is named ACP after its location (Artefact Collection Pit) near Rietputs Pit 1, which has an age of ca 1.7 Ma and is at the western side of the Rietputs farm. Organized core reduction strategies are absent from ACP, but they are present in a second assemblage collected from Rietputs Pit 5 over 2 km to the east in the same site complex, where dates from five gravels, all of which contain stone tools, range from ca 1.2 to 1.6 Ma. The Pit 5 assemblage with organized core flaking strategies is directly dated to ca 1.3 Ma (Leader et al., in press). Also at the nearby site of Canteen Kopje, an assemblage excavated from a layer dated to 1.51 Ma contains organized core reduction strategies (Leader 2014). Based on these technological comparisons and on the comparable nature of the large cutting tools (LCTs) with those from the Cradle of Humankind, we interpret the ACP site at Rietputs 15 to be older than 1.3–1.5 Ma. This assemblage adds to our understanding of the Early Acheulean in South Africa. Large cutting tools in the two regions were made both on flakes and cobbles and show much variability in plan form. Pick-like forms are common but not exclusive. The LCTs from both regions are described to provide a picture of Early Acheulean adaptations in South Africa.