Survey at Featherbeds

June 2018

Knysna, South Africa

The road to Featherbeds was steep, clinging to the side of a cliff, diving through the fynbos. The green vegetation belied the destruction of the prior year, hiding the scars from the mudslides and the blackened remnants of the previous shrubs. Like a cauterizing blade, the fires had removed the imported flora from the cliffs, leaving room for the native plants, the ones that existed almost nowhere else, to bloom. In a region with the highest percentage of floral diversity, this reset was crucial. It provided a glimpse, a portal into the past, offering biologists a better understanding of the native plant life. It also provided archaeologists a chance to understand the longer-term use of Knysna. With the land cleared, an early stone age site was uncovered. One of the surveyors, Martin Hatchuel, recognized the significance of the site and contacted Dr. Cleghorn, instigating our investigation.

Beside us, the road fell away, a steep drop terminating in rocks framed by rippling waves. Beyond them was the eastern side of the Knysna heads, familiar territory. Our main excavation, a Middle/Later stone age site (~45,000-18,000 years old) was hidden among the rocks on the eastern heads, where we worked sunup to sundown five days a week. However, this Friday we wound our way up the western cliff, finally coming to rest on a flat grassy plain at the top.

As Dr. C and Martin went ahead, plunging into the fynbos, the students split up the load: camera, Total stations, GPS, and tripods, between the packs. Ironically, before we packed anything, we discovered that the site was within a stone’s throw of the road. Clutching our burdens, we picked our way across the slope, stopping to exclaim at every stone point (about every five seconds). Fascinated, we roamed across the site, cameras in hand. Early stone age tools are fascinatingly massive, handaxes larger than my hand. The average length of the tools we analyzed was 16.7cm, or 6.6 inches. And there were so many of them at Featherbed.

Soon we were setting up the GPS and the Total stations, trying to get a reading on the location. Our plan was simple: locate, take a GIS reading, and photograph every artifact we could see. This is referred to as a “catch and release” strategy. In reality, the electronic equipment proved more challenging. Out on the cliff, we were starting from scratch, without preset coordinates to compare our data. Slowly, as we worked, the site began to take shape. Landscapers had dug a ditch through down the middle of the site, dislodging and misplacing dozens of artifacts. However, clinging to the edge of the plowed slope, was the biggest handaxe most of us had ever seen. A tool that size is perhaps more symbolic than utilitarian: a work of art and showmanship.

Once a grid was established, and our equipment working, we began to number the artifacts (this is important for matching the spatial data with the analysis). One team numbered every specimen, another used the total station to capture the spatial coordinates of each artifact. A third team photographed the front and back of each find. As we wandered through the thick brush, we discovered additional tools at every turn.

The day was warm, sunlight shining off the waves. A whale breached nearby, repeatedly leaping from the water. As the sun began to fade, we packed our bags, sadly realizing there were more stone tools that we had neglected to find, hidden beneath the brush.

Early stone tools are not necessarily uncommon across the African landscape. However, they represent some of the issues with Paleoanthropology and archaeology. For example, at KEH-1, we can date the site using methods such as optically stimulated luminescence and charcoal radiometric dating. As we dig, we assess any disturbances which would displace anthropogenic finds, and use this to verify the context of our dates. One of our goals at featherbeds was to understand if the tools were in an original context, or if humans or nature had disturbed them.

So, we looked at the spatial relation of the tools and potential refits (if there are any flakes that match with cores). By we, I mostly mean our lithics people, who understand rocks and the properties of rocks. One of the downsides to a site of this age and exposure is that other material—bones, ect—generally disintegrates long before the archaeologists arrived. Our ability to refit these tools with cores suggests that the tools are in primary context and that they were abandoned/discarded at a relatively early stage of life, because there is no use damage to the tools, and humans did

not retouch (replace the edge) on any tools. So, Featherbed is a site where hominins hung out on the top of the cliff, making stone tools, possibly looking out at the unbelievably amazing wave action during warmer climatic cycles, or perhaps eyeing animals on the exposed Paleo-Agulhas Plain when the glacial periods froze the water in the polar glaciers and opened more land for use. As of right now, we have no way to date the lithics, so I am hypothesizing the possibilities based on previous research.

Post-survey celebration 

April 2019

Albuquerque, New Mexico 

But how useful is this information, unless we can share it with other researchers and the public? It represents our collective heritage and should be available for anyone to see (one of the reasons for this blog). We put together a poster to present at the Society of American Archaeology meetings, which is one of the largest gatherings of archaeologists worldwide. All of our authors were able to attend, and most of us hovered around the poster, explaining our results to unsuspecting attendees. Conferences remain an important part of the research experience--it's a way to disseminate our work (more quickly and less painfully than the extensive publishing process, and sometimes validate our existence to a university), keep track of research in our field, and network (Of course, a conference experience is not necessarily a positive one, and many people are keeping close tabs on the current controversy from the SAA meeting). Overall, this poster was a great way to wrap up our field experience. 

Stay tuned for more adventures in the coming months...I'm heading back to the field in mid-May. A few of my co-authors are joining me, others are heading off on fascinating adventures of their own. 

photo credit: G. Griffin

Photo credit: J. Hodgkins