The Doring River Archaeology Project: approaching the evolution of human land use patterns in the Western Cape, South Africa

The open-air archaeology of southern Africa is extremely rich, yet has been only modestly influential in constructions of Late Pleistocene human behavior. Here we report on two seasons of work conducted as part of the Doring River Archaeology Project, which aims to reveal patterns of human land use and technological decision-making from the Earlier Stone Age through to the appearance of herders in southern Africa’s semi-arid interior. Across those two seasons we have mapped and analyzed more than 20,000 cores and tools across six open-air localities, with the small sample of available ages suggesting the accumulation of archaeologically-rich sediment bodies along the Doring River extends back to at least 200,000 years. Our results suggest clustering of artifacts at multiple temporal and spatial scales, from individual knapping events to aggregates of hundreds of bifacial tools. All known phases of the archaeological record appear to be represented in these assemblages, and previously documented contrasts between occupational patterns in the region’s open-air and rock shelter localities is reinforced. These data confirm the critical importance of incorporating open-air data into depictions of the human past in studies of the African Paleolithic.