Western Lesotho Research Articles

A zooarchaeological perspective on late pleistocene/early holocene human behaviour in the Maloti-Drakensberg region, southern Africa: The view from Ha Makotoko and Ntloana Tšoana rock-shelters, Lesotho

Re-excavation of Ha Makotoko and Ntloana Tšoana rock-shelters in western Lesotho, produced abundant faunal remains (both macro and micro) from people using the Robberg technocomplex during the late Pleistocene (Ha Makotoko and Ntloana Tšoana (15.4–13.4 kcal. BP) and early Holocene (Ntloana Tšoana 11.1–10.2 kcal. BP). This faunal material allows us to identify the subsistence strategies they employed, using the unbiased Simpson's evenness index (1-D′), and Shannon's evenness index to track diet breadth. Detailed analyses of the sites' microfauna indicates that eagle owls and/or small carnivores — not humans — were responsible for introducing them into the deposits. A chi-squared test comparing diet breadth across the sites identifies hunting strategy, focused on size 2 and 3 migratory ungulates (equids, suids, and bovids), supplemented with size 1 and 4 bovids. Comparing the evenness values from Ha Makotoko and Ntloana Tšoana to published data from other Robberg-associated sites in the wider Maloti-Drakensberg region (Sehonghong, Rose Cottage Cave and Tloutle) allows variability in subsistence strategies to be addressed. A chi-squared test comparing ungulate size classes, small mammals and fish with the evenness index reveals two important statistical differences: the warm period occupation (16.5–14.3 kcal. BP) at Rose Cottage Cave presents a narrow diet heavily focused on size 3 ungulates (with a lack of fish). At the other end of the climate spectrum, cold conditions at Sehonghong immediately before the Last Glacial Maximum were associated with a narrow diet focused on intensive fishing, with lower-than-expected numbers of size 3 ungulates. The deposits at Ntloana Tšoana, Ha Makotoko, and Tloutle, along with the Younger Dryas-associated assemblage from Sehonghong, on the other hand, present broad diets. Fish and small mammals make more of a contribution to the expanding diet in the highlands. Our approach demonstrates the flexibility that makers of Robberg tools displayed in adapting to the changing climatic and ecological conditions of this high-elevation region in the interior of southern Africa during Marine Isotope Stage 2 and across the Pleistocene/Holocene transition.

Riches of the Roma valley: theropod and ornithischian tracks from the Early Jurassic southern Africa

ABSTRACT The Upper Triassic – Lower Jurassic Stormberg Group, main Karoo Basin, is notably rich in diverse dinosaur trace fossils, particularly in the Roma Valley of western Lesotho. Here, we document in detail, for the first time, the Mokhosi ichnosite (Roma Valley), initially reported simply as preserving tridactyl tracks. Thirty-five pes tracks were identified, predominantly preserved as bipedal and quadrupedal trackways attributable to theropod and ornithischian trackmakers. Three distinct morphotypes consisting of pes or manus-pes pairs were assigned to Anomoepus, Eubrontes and tentatively to Kayentapus. Our Morphotype III, although comparable to Kayentapus, preserves quantitative and qualitative features distinct from other large southern African Kayentapus-like tracks, and possesses some characteristics that lean to an ornithischian affinity rather than theropod. Ultimately, the Mokhosi ichnosite contributes to the diverse ichnological record of the Roma Valley, which now includes 15 ichnosites that preserve Anomoepus, Eubrontes, Grallator, Kayentapus and Trisauropodiscus. Furthermore, this site provides essential data for refining our understanding of Early Jurassic ornithischians in Gondwana, which are minor components of the trace- and body-fossil records.

Ecological stability of Late Pleistocene-to-Holocene Lesotho, southern Africa, facilitated human upland habitation

Investigation of Homo sapiens’ palaeogeographic expansion into African mountain environments are changing the understanding of our species’ adaptions to various extreme Pleistocene climates and habitats. Here, we present a vegetation and precipitation record from the Ha Makotoko rockshelter in western Lesotho, which extends from ~60,000 to 1,000 years ago. Stable carbon isotope ratios from plant wax biomarkers indicate a constant C3-dominated ecosystem up to about 5,000 years ago, followed by C4 grassland expansion due to increasing Holocene temperatures. Hydrogen isotope ratios indicate a drier, yet stable, Pleistocene and Early Holocene compared to a relatively wet Late Holocene. Although relatively cool and dry, the Pleistocene was ecologically reliable due to generally uniform precipitation amounts, which incentivized persistent habitation because of dependable freshwater reserves that supported rich terrestrial foods and provided prime locations for catching fish.

The Rock Arts of Metolong: Paintings, Archaeology and Cultural Resource Management in Western Lesotho

Abstract Archaeological mitigation efforts in advance of Lesotho’s Metolong Dam involved comprehensive documentation of rock paintings in the area threatened with inundation, as well as pigment characterisation and direct dating. This paper gives an overview of the rock arts found and their key features. Four traditions are present. Most paintings belong to the fine-line San tradition, but there are also examples of Type 3 images previously only recognised in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province. Two other traditions are identified as being made by local Basotho communities. Contextual evidence suggests that they relate to male identity and, in the case of ochre smears and handprints, specifically to male initiation rituals. Some of the rock art sites identified are, in fact, used today by male and female initiation schools. The importance of comprehensively documenting rock art in other locations where it is at risk of being lost via development projects is stressed. Metolong sets a standard for rock art recording in cultural resource management work in the wider region.

More-than-sequence: The early Holocene at Ntloana Tšoana, western Lesotho

Intensive stratigraphic work on a horizontally extensive but shallow sample of early Holocene archaeology at Ntloana Tšoana rockshelter in western Lesotho has revealed a complex social history of waxing and waning occupation sandwiched between, and overlapping with, two distinct flood events. Bayesian models of radiocarbon and OSL ages are critical, enabling robust temporal ranges to be assigned to stratigraphic phases despite considerable challenges. This, in turn, means that site-specific happenings can be linked to broader ecological and cultural processes, including early Holocene warming and the emergence of southern Africa's small scraper tradition. By emphasising the duration of human activity, these results also show how specific hide working practices were repeated there by successive generations. Questions arise about the separation of scales that has characterised explanation in Later Stone Age archaeology and the largely overlooked role of persistent places in hunter-gatherer history. It is argued that repeatedly occupied rockshelters and their enduring sedimentary, bone and lithic residues would have been active entities in the past, anchoring people in time and space and may have led to an ontological merging of practice and place. Related ways of thinking about our own practice reveals that archaeologists can also benefit from thinking about sedimentary deposits as active and enduring as well as sequential.

The social world of hunter-gatherers in early Holocene Lesotho: integrating method and theory

This thesis presents new early Holocene excavations at Ntloana Tsoana in western Lesotho and makes the case for reintegrating method and theory in southern African Later Stone Age archaeology. It i...

The first megatheropod tracks from the Lower Jurassic upper Elliot Formation, Karoo Basin, Lesotho.

A palaeosurface with one megatheropod trackway and several theropod tracks and trackways from the Lower Jurassic upper Elliot Formation (Stormberg Group, Karoo Supergroup) in western Lesotho is described. The majority of the theropod tracks are referable to either Eubrontes or Kayentapus based on their morphological characteristics. The larger megatheropod tracks are 57 cm long and have no Southern Hemisphere equivalent. Morphologically, they are more similar to the Early Jurassic Kayentapus, as well as the much younger Upper Cretaceous ichnogenus Irenesauripus, than to other contemporaneous ichnogenera in southern Africa. Herein they have been placed within the ichnogenus Kayentapus and described as a new ichnospecies (Kayentapus ambrokholohali). The tracks are preserved on ripple marked, very fine-grained sandstone of the Lower Jurassic upper Elliot Formation, and thus were made after the end-Triassic mass extinction event (ETE). This new megatheropod trackway site marks the first occurrence of very large carnivorous dinosaurs (estimated body length >8–9 meters) in the Early Jurassic of southern Gondwana, an evolutionary strategy that was repeatedly pursued and amplified in the following ~135 million years, until the next major biotic crisis at the end-Cretaceous.

Development-led archaeology and ethics in Lesotho

In 2008 the Metolong Cultural Resource Management (MCRM) Project embarked upon an ambitious four-year programme that coupled heritage mitigation with capacity building for heritage management in Lesotho. Ahead of western Lesotho's Metolong Dam, a corps of ten Basotho was trained in archaeological field skills and participated in archaeological and anthropological mitigation operations supervised by a team from the University of Oxford. While the MCRM Project's training programme was a success, the Project has recently come to and end and employment opportunities for trainees have not emerged. Infrastructure for heritage management in Lesotho remains under-resourced and there is little indication that future large-scale development projects will promote capacity building in that area. The consequences of this state of affairs will include not only an industrial deficit, but also an impoverishment of workable conceptions of heritage produced by Basotho communities and particular to development in Lesotho. This paper discusses the ethical crossroads at which we find ourselves when capacity building programmes end without producing employment opportunities or enhanced heritage management infrastructure. We explore possible future directions for independent trainee-led co-operatives, regional accreditation and codes of practice for trainees and the devolution of responsibility for ensuring adequate standards of heritage management.

Before the flood: Loss of place, mnemonics, and ‘resources’ ahead of the Metolong Dam, Lesotho

Natural resource extraction projects such as dams and mines entail alteration to or destruction of natural and cultural landscapes. Heritage mitigation efforts often propose compensating for or salvaging material heritage, largely because this can be inventoried and evaluated alongside economic and environmental resources. Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) is often overlooked, despite the fact that tangibles, intangibles, and economic resources together constitute the impacted landscape. Writing from the perspective of western Lesotho’s Metolong Dam, we view landscape as an embodiment of intangible heritage to explore what ‘landscape loss’ consequent on dam-building entails. We contend that this process involves dissociating intangibles from their material correlates, and transforming landscape experiences by dissolving and re-constituting boundaries and ‘resources’ in line with developer perspectives. We suggest that considering interdisciplinary approaches to landscape theorisation and ICH achieves a more nuanced view of how landscape loss and ICH interrelate, and thus improves mitigatory practice.

How to develop Intangible Heritage: the case of Metolong Dam, Lesotho

After ten years and extensive debate of UNESCO’s Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage (2003), workable definitions and frameworks for safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) are either emergent or non-existent. This is particularly significant in the case of heritage mitigation associated with large-scale construction projects: where these entail population resettlement and/or landscape loss, recording ICH is necessary both for impact assessment and mitigation and for helping impacted-upon communities cope with trauma. Nevertheless, there is little discussion of how to implement ICH safeguarding frameworks in salvage contexts.This paper focuses on attempts to record ICH impacted upon by western Lesotho’s Metolong Dam. We highlight the practical shortcomings of existing ICH definitions and safeguarding protocols. We discuss the methodology used at Metolong and its ethical entailments, and take inspiration from UNESCO policy (and debates thereupon) and other sources in an attempt to find a workable framework for ICH recording in development contexts.

Archaeology and Dam Projects in Lesotho

An increasing number of large dam projects present a major threat to cultural heritage in much of Africa. This paper asks how such destructive projects can be held to account; not only to mitigate damage, but also to develop local heritage management structures and increase public awareness. It focuses on the situation in Lesotho, which has a history of large dam projects, but a severely under-resourced archaeological and heritage management community. The main emphasis is on a recent and ongoing project in advance of the Metolong Dam in western Lesotho that was founded with training and skills transfer as a primary aim. In addition to some practical suggestions for Lesotho that take into account its particular geopolitical context, this case study brings three broader interrelated issues into view, none of which are new, but all of which deserve fresh attention: the unsuitability of a solely commercial, contract-based response to the threat from development; the negative effects of using unskilled 'labour'; and the imperative to develop an archaeology that is relevant to and actively involves the rural African communities within which we work.

Holocene palaeoenvironments inferred from a sedimentary sequence in the Tsoaing River Basin, western Lesotho

The paper presents a sedimentological, palynological, and phytolith record from a 13 m deep Holocene sedimentary sequence, located in the Tsoaing River valley, southwestern Lesotho. Six conventional radiocarbon and two AMS dates provide a relatively high resolution Holocene record for the sedimentary sequence, ranging from ca. 12 000 to 4000 years BP. Pollen is absent in the upper section but present in the lower 2 m, confirming terminal Pleistocene/Holocene conditions reported in previous published pollen and charcoal records from the region. The absence of pollen in the upper layers of ca. 9000 years BP and younger suggests that conditions over southwestern Lesotho throughout much of the Holocene was typified by a seasonal climate that prevented long-term preservation of plant remains, although other plant material like robust spores, microscopic charcoal, and phytoliths withstood oxidation. Sedimentological and phytolith results suggest that the period from ca. 8600 to 8450 years BP experienced rapid environmental change towards drier conditions. Phases of chemical disintegration with organic input (including local swamp phytoliths) are suggested at ca. 7000 years BP and again after 4500 years BP.

Thuathe, a new H4/5 chondrite from Lesotho: History of the fall, petrography, and geochemistry

Abstract— On July 21, 2002, a meteorite fall occurred over the Thuathe plateau of western Lesotho. The well‐defined strewn field covers an area of 1.9 times 7.4 km. Many of the recovered specimens display a brecciated texture with leucocratic, angular to subrounded clasts in a somewhat darker groundmass. Mineralogical and chemical data, as well as oxygen isotopic analysis, indicate that Thuathe is an H4/5, S2/3 meteorite, with local H3 or H6 character. A number of anomalous features include somewhat high Co contents of kamacite and taenite relative to normal H‐group chondrites. Oxygen isotopic data plot at the edge of the normal H chondrite data field. Variable contents of metallic mineral phases and troilite result in a heterogeneous bulk composition (e.g., with regard to Si, Fe, and Mg), resulting in a spread of major element ratios that is not consistent with previously accepted H‐group composition. Trace element abundances are generally consistent with H chondritic composition, and Kr and Xe isotopic data agree with an H4 classification for this meteorite. Noble gas analysis gave U, Th‐4He gas retention and K‐Ar ages typical for H chondrites; no major thermal event affected this material since ∼3.7 Ga. The exposure age for Thuathe is 5 Ma, somewhat lower than for other H chondrites. Cosmogenic nuclide analysis indicates a pre‐atmospheric radius of this meteorite between 35 and 40 cm. In the absence of evidence for solar gases, we classify Thuathe as a fragmental breccia.Numerous narrow, black veins cut across samples of Thuathe and are the result of a brittle deformation event that also caused local melting, especially in portions rich in sulfide. The formation of these veinlets is not the result of locally enhanced shock pressures (i.e., of shock melting) but rather of shearing under brittle conditions with local, friction‐related temperature excursions causing melting mostly of Fe‐sulfide and FeNi‐metal but also, locally, of silicate minerals. Frictional temperature excursions must have attained values in excess of 1500 °C to permit complete melting of forsteritic olivine.

The Organization of Later Stone Age Lithic Technology in the Caledon Valley, Southern Africa

Paleoclimatic data indicate that the Pleistocene/Holocene transition was a period of considerable ecological change in the Caledon Valley of the southern African interior. Stone artefact assemblages from sites in one part of this region, the Phutiatsana ea Thaba Bosiu (PTB) Basin of western Lesotho, were analyzed in order to investigate whether changes in settlement and subsistence strategies during this period are also reflected in the organization of lithic technologies. It appears that although technological solutions to the problems of subsistence risk may have been emphasized during the late Pleistocene, social means, such as exchange, dominated at the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary. Subsequent innovation or adoption of new formal tool types suggests that both strategies were important from the middle Holocene onwards.

Symbiotic Interaction Between Black Farmers and South-Eastern San: Implications for Southern African Rock Art Studies, Ethnographic Analogy, and Hunter-Gatherer Cultural Identity

L'influence des chasseurs-cueilleurs en Afrique du Sud est a l'origine de l'expression artistique des concepts et des rites religieux des fermiers africains, resultant d'un echange de culture et d'ideologie entre les 2 groupes

Archaeological Investigations at two Lesotho Rock-shelters: Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene Assemblages from Ha Makotoko and Ntloana Tsoana

Results of the excavation of two rock-shelters in the Phuthiatsana-ea-Thaba Bosiu Basin of western Lesotho, southern Africa are reported. Later Stone Age occupation at both sites was principally a feature of the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene. Analysis of the artefact assemblages shows that, while all in situ occurrences belong to the Oakhurst Industrial Complex, significant differences are apparent between those pre- and post-dating 7500 BC. A shift towards hunting smaller bovids and changes in site occupation at the regional scale are also evident at this time. Differences between the archaeological signatures at the two sites are discussed in the light of recent models of seasonal aggregation and dispersal. Comparisons are drawn with the archaeological record of neighbouring parts of South Africa and a strong contrast is suggested between terminal Pleistocene! early Holocene settlement strategies and those of the recent Holocene within the research area.

Ntloana Tsoana: A Middle Stone Age Sequence from Western Lesotho

Ntloana Tsoana: A Middle Stone Age Sequence from Western Lesotho

Preliminary Report on the Later Stone Age Sequence from Tloutle Rock Shelter, Western Lesotho

Preliminary Report on the Later Stone Age Sequence from Tloutle Rock Shelter, Western Lesotho