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Pinnacle Point and Vleesbaai, South Coast of South Africa

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Handbook of Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa

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Abstract

Pinnacle Point (PP; 34.20o S, 22.08o E) is a quartzitic rocky headland on the south coast of South Africa on the Indian Ocean (Figs. 1 and 2). PP hosts a series of caves/rockshelters, open-air archaeological sites, and geological features where a transdisciplinary paleoanthropological research project has focused its attention since 1999. That research has made many important contributions to our understanding of human evolution, and its paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental context, including the earliest evidence for coastal foraging and several important technological milestones, such as stone tool heat treatment and microlithic technology. The main archaeological sites so far investigated at PP are named the PP Shell Midden Complex, PP5-6N, PP5-6S, PP9, PP13A, and PP13B. Some of the caves critical to the paleoclimate and paleoenvironment research are PP13G, PP29, PP30, Crevice Cave, and Staircase Cave. Vleesbaai (VB) is a log-spiral bay just to the west of PP within easy walking distance. VB is dominated by a long stretch of sandy beach with active Holocene dunes and Pleistocene remnant uncemented paleosols and dunes revealed in section. Archaeological sites are found throughout these Holocene and Pleistocene sediments. Together the caves/rockshelters at PP and the open-air sites at VB preserve both ends of the settlement system of Stone Age people in this region.

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Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges all the work and support of the very large team that made this work possible. He acknowledges the generous support of the funding agencies: the National Science Foundation (BCS-0524087, BCS-1138073 and BCS-1460376), Hyde Family Foundations, the Institute of Human Origins (IHO) at Arizona State University, and the John Templeton Foundation to the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of any of these funding organizations. The climate simulations referred to here were partially supported by the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) Stampede system at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). The latter allocation was available through the National Science Foundation grant number ACI-1548562, project allocation number DBS140003.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Human Origins, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Curtis W. Marean

  2. African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University, Gqeberha (Formerly Port Elizabeth), Eastern Cape, South Africa

    Curtis W. Marean

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  1. Curtis W. Marean
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Correspondence to Curtis W. Marean .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology and Center for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA

    Amanuel Beyin

  2. Institute of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    David K. Wright

  3. Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, School of Environment and Science, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia

    Jayne Wilkins

  4. Department of Anthropology and Penn Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Deborah I. Olszewski

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Marean, C.W. (2023). Pinnacle Point and Vleesbaai, South Coast of South Africa. In: Beyin, A., Wright, D.K., Wilkins, J., Olszewski, D.I. (eds) Handbook of Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20290-2_105

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