SOUTH AFRICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY
KWAZULU-NATAL BRANCH
(Notice 2023/01)
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70 years later – New research at Holley Shelter, a Middle and Later Stone Age site in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
By Gregor Bader
Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (HEP), University of Tübingen
In 1952 Gordon Cramb published the first report on his excavations at Holley Shelter near Wartburg in KwaZulu-Natal. Despite the promise his work suggested, Holley Shelter disappeared from archaeological thinking until 2015, when we re-analyzed his stone artefact collection. Our study tentatively suggested an occupation of the shelter between 60,000 and 30,000 years ago. In 2022, 70 years after Cramb’s first report, we started new excavations at the site in an effort to improve the dating of the archaeological deposits and recover information on past environments in the region. This talk provides results from our 2022 field campaign.