The Later Stone Age of Welgevonden Rock Shelter, Waterberg, Limpopo Province, South Africa
Main Article Content
Keywords
backed tools and scrapers, ostrich eggshell beads, fine-line rock art, Eiland ceramics, ritualised space
Abstract
Welgevonden Rock Shelter and its surrounds were used intermittently from the Earlier Stone Age to the Later Stone Age and perhaps by Iron Age farmers. We report on Later Stone Age occupations that probably began in the last few thousand years and persisted until at least 270 years ago. The rich lithic assemblage contains a variety of backed tools and small end scrapers made on quartz, chalcedony and siltstone together with a large assemblage of ground stone. Most chalcedony artefacts were probably manufactured elsewhere, whereas quartz and siltstone lithics were made on site. The excavated rock shelter lacks rock art, but two sites with fine-line paintings are nearby. The north-eastern site has multiple painting events and both sites have paintings of metal artefacts made by Iron Age farmers. Recovered farmer artefacts include Eiland ceramic sherds, one Letsibogo sherd, several iron beads and a fragment of a glass bead. People may have worked with rain near the excavated rock shelter on the hillside which bears several rock cisterns that fill with water after rains. Plant identifications made from seeds and charcoal indicate that the savanna vegetation of the area was essentially the same as it is presently. Spatial segregation of domestic and ritual behaviour, of the kind recorded in some ethnographies, is suggested by the proximity of the occupied (unpainted) rock shelter to unoccupied rock art sites.
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References
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van der Ryst, M.M. 1998. The Waterberg Plateau in the Northern Province, Republic of South Africa, in the Later Stone Age. Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 43. BAR International Series 715. Oxford: BAR Publishing.
van der Ryst, M.M. 2006. Seeking shelter: Later Stone Age Hunters, Gatherers and Fishers of Olieboomspoort in the Western Waterberg, South of the Limpopo. PhD diss., University of the Witwatersrand.
van Doornum, B.L. 2005. Changing places, spaces and identity in the Shashe-Limpopo region of Limpopo Province, South Africa. PhD diss., University of the Witwatersrand.
Van Schalkwyk, J.A. 2002. Metaphors and meanings: Contextualising the Schroda clay figurines. In: van Schalkwyk, J.A. & Hanisch, E.O.M. (eds) Sculptured in Clay: Iron Age Figurines from Schroda, Limpopo Province, South Africa, 69–79. Pretoria: National Cultural History Museum.
van Wyk, B., van Oudtshoorn, B. & Gericke, N. 2022. Medicinal Plants of South Africa. Pretoria: Briza.
van Wyk, B. & van Wyk, P. 2013. Field Guide to Trees of Southern Africa (2nd Edition). Cape Town: Struik.
Vinnicombe, P. 1976. People of The Eland: Rock Paintings of the Drakensberg Bushmen as a Reflection of their Life and Thought. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press.
Wadley, L. 1987. Hunters and Gatherers of the Southern Transvaal. Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 25. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Wadley, L. 2000. The Wilton and pre-ceramic Post-Classic Wilton industries at Rose Cottage Cave and their context in the South African sequence. South African Archaeological Bulletin, 55: 90–106.
Wadley, L., Antonites, A.R., Biemond, W., et al. 2022. Late Holocene use of Kaingo Sheep Rock Shelter in the western Waterberg, Limpopo, South Africa. Southern African Humanities, 35: 103-148.
Wadley, L., Mauran, G., Sievers, C., et al. 2021. Red Balloon Rock Shelter: Iron Age and Middle Stone Age occupations on the Waterberg Plateau in Limpopo, South Africa. Southern African Humanities, 34: 19-58.
Wiessner, P. 1983. Style and social information in Kalahari San projectile points. American Antiquity, 48 (2): 253–276.
Witelson, D.M. 2022. Performance theory: A growing interest in rock art research. Time and Mind, 15 (3–4): 313–341. https://doi.org/10.1080/175 1696X.2023.2185539.
Wadley, L., Biemond, W., Laue, G., Sievers, C., Thorp, C. & de Kock, M. 2023. Woodstock Rocks: From Acheulean to Iron Age in the Waterberg, Limpopo Province, South Africa. Southern African Field Archaeology, 18: Article 2788
Whitley, D.S. 1998. Finding rain in the desert: Landscape, gender and far western North American rock art. In: Chippendale, C. & Taçon, P. (eds) The Archaeology of Rock Art, 11–29. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Witelson, David M. 2023. Theatres of Imagery: A Performance Theory Approach to Rock Art Research. Oxford: BAR Publishing.
Yellen, J.E. 1977. Archaeological Approaches to the Present: Models for Reconstructing the Past. Michigan: University of Michigan.
Aukema, J. 1989. Rain-making: A thousand year-old ritual? South African Archaeological Bulletin, 44: 70-72.
Biesele, M. 1993. Women Like Meat: The Folklore and Foraging Ideology of the Kalahari Ju/’hoan. Bloomington, Indianapolis and Johannesburg: Indiana University Press and University of the Witwatersrand Press.
Bleek, D.F. 1928a. The Naron: A Bushman Tribe of the Central Kalahari. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bleek, D.F. 1928b. Bushmen of Central Angola. Bantu Studies, 3 (2): 105–125.
Bleek, W.H.I. & Lloyd, L. 1968. Specimens of Bushman Folklore. Facsimile Reprint. Cape Town: C. Struik.
Deacon, J. 1972. Wilton: an assessment after fifty years. South African Archaeological Bulletin, 27: 10–48.
Deacon, J. 1992. Arrows as agents of belief amongst the /Xam Bushmen. Margaret Shaw Lecture 3. Cape Town: South African Museum.
Deacon, J. & Foster, C. 2005. My Heart Stands in the Hill. London, Cape Town, Sydney and Auckland: Struik.
Eastwood, E. 1999. Red lines and arrows: attributes of supernatural potency in San rock art of the Northern Province, South Africa and South-Western Zimbabwe. The South African Archaeological Bulletin, 54: 16-27.
Garlake, P.S. 1987. The Painted Cave: An Introduction to the Prehistoric Art of Zimbabwe. Harare: Modus Publications.
Germishuizen, G. & Meyer, N.L. 2003. Plants of South Africa. Strelitzia 14. Pretoria: South African National Biodiversity Institute.
Guillemard, I. 2025. Lithic knapping strategies during the late Holocene: new analyses from Buterix 1, Eastern Cape, South Africa. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 68 (2025) 105437
Hammond-Tooke, W.D. 1981. Boundaries and Belief: The Structure of a Sotho Worldview. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press.
Hammond-Tooke, W.D. 1993. The Roots of Black South Africa. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball.
Harman, J. 2006. Using Decorrelation Stretch to enhance rock art images. Available from: http://www.dstretch.com/AlgorithmDescription.pdf (Accessed: 2023).
Heinz, H.-J. 1978. The male initiation of the !Ko Bushmen and its acculturative changes. Paper presented at the International Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies, Paris, 27–30 June 1978.
Huffman, T.N. 1990. Obituary: The Waterberg research of Jan Aukema. South African Archaeological Bulletin, 45: 117-119.
Huffman, T.N. 2007. Handbook to the Iron Age: The Archaeology of Pre-colonial Farming Societies in Southern Africa. Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press.
Katz, R. 1982. Boiling Energy: Community Healing Among the Kalahari Kung. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Laue, G.B. 2000. Taking a stance: Posture and meaning in the rock art of the Waterberg, Northern Province, South Africa. Masters Diss., University of the Witwatersrand.
Lee, R.B. 1979. The !Kung San: Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lewis-Williams, J.D. 1974. Superpositioning in a sample of rock-paintings from the Barkly East District. The South African Archaeological Bulletin, 29: 93-103.
Lewis-Williams, J.D. 1981. Believing and Seeing: Symbolic Meanings in Southern San Rock Paintings. London: Academic Press.
Lewis-Williams, J.D. 1990. Discovering Southern African Rock Art. Cape Town & Johannesburg: David Philip.
Marshall, L.J. 1976. The !Kung of Nyae Nyae. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Marshall, L.J. 1999. Nyae Nyae !Kung: Beliefs and Rites. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Peabody Museum Monographs 8.
McNabb, J. 2009. The ESA stone tool assemblage from Cave of Hearths, Beds 1-3. In: McNabb, J. & Sinclair, A. (eds) The Cave of Hearths: Makapan Middle Pleistocene Research Project – Field Research by Anthony Sinclair and Patrick Quinney, 1996-2001. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports International Series 1940.
Metzger, F. 1950. Narro and His Clan. Windhoek: John Meinert.
Mucina, L. & Rutherford, M.C. 2006. The Vegetation of South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland. Strelitzia 19. In: Mucina, L. & Rutherford, M.C. (eds) Strelitzia 19. Pretoria: South African National Biodiversity Institute.
Schlömann, H. 1896. Felszeichnungen der Buschmänner bei Pusompe in Nord-Transvaal, einer Cult-Stätte der jetzt dort ansässigen Massele. Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 28: 220–221.
Schoeman, M.H. 2006. Clouding Power? Rain-Control Space, Landscapes and Ideology in Shashe-Limpopo State Formation. PhD diss., University of the Witwatersrand.
Schoeman, M.H. 2009. Excavating the “Waterpits in the Mountain”: The archaeology of Shashe-Limpopo Confluence Area rain-hill rock tanks. Southern African Humanities, 21: 275–298.
Smith, B.W. 2006. Reading rock art and writing genetic history: Regionalism, ethnicity and the rock art of southern Africa. In: Soodyall, H. (ed.) The Prehistory of Africa: Tracing the Lineage of Modern Man, 76–96. Jeppestown: Jonathan Ball.
The Waterberg Tree Group. 2024. Trees and Shrubs of the Waterberg. Pretoria: Seriti Printing.
Val, A., de la Peña, P., Duval, M., Bansal, S., Colino, F., Culey, J., Hodgskiss, T. et al. 2021. The place beyond the trees: renewed excavations of the Middle Stone Age deposits at Olieboomspoort in the Waterberg Mountains of the South African Savanna Biome. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 13: 116, 32 pp.; DOI: 10.1007/s12520–021–01302.
van der Ryst, M.M. 1998. The Waterberg Plateau in the Northern Province, Republic of South Africa, in the Later Stone Age. Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 43. BAR International Series 715. Oxford: BAR Publishing.
van der Ryst, M.M. 2006. Seeking shelter: Later Stone Age Hunters, Gatherers and Fishers of Olieboomspoort in the Western Waterberg, South of the Limpopo. PhD diss., University of the Witwatersrand.
van Doornum, B.L. 2005. Changing places, spaces and identity in the Shashe-Limpopo region of Limpopo Province, South Africa. PhD diss., University of the Witwatersrand.
Van Schalkwyk, J.A. 2002. Metaphors and meanings: Contextualising the Schroda clay figurines. In: van Schalkwyk, J.A. & Hanisch, E.O.M. (eds) Sculptured in Clay: Iron Age Figurines from Schroda, Limpopo Province, South Africa, 69–79. Pretoria: National Cultural History Museum.
van Wyk, B., van Oudtshoorn, B. & Gericke, N. 2022. Medicinal Plants of South Africa. Pretoria: Briza.
van Wyk, B. & van Wyk, P. 2013. Field Guide to Trees of Southern Africa (2nd Edition). Cape Town: Struik.
Vinnicombe, P. 1976. People of The Eland: Rock Paintings of the Drakensberg Bushmen as a Reflection of their Life and Thought. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press.
Wadley, L. 1987. Hunters and Gatherers of the Southern Transvaal. Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 25. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Wadley, L. 2000. The Wilton and pre-ceramic Post-Classic Wilton industries at Rose Cottage Cave and their context in the South African sequence. South African Archaeological Bulletin, 55: 90–106.
Wadley, L., Antonites, A.R., Biemond, W., et al. 2022. Late Holocene use of Kaingo Sheep Rock Shelter in the western Waterberg, Limpopo, South Africa. Southern African Humanities, 35: 103-148.
Wadley, L., Mauran, G., Sievers, C., et al. 2021. Red Balloon Rock Shelter: Iron Age and Middle Stone Age occupations on the Waterberg Plateau in Limpopo, South Africa. Southern African Humanities, 34: 19-58.
Wiessner, P. 1983. Style and social information in Kalahari San projectile points. American Antiquity, 48 (2): 253–276.
Witelson, D.M. 2022. Performance theory: A growing interest in rock art research. Time and Mind, 15 (3–4): 313–341. https://doi.org/10.1080/175 1696X.2023.2185539.
Wadley, L., Biemond, W., Laue, G., Sievers, C., Thorp, C. & de Kock, M. 2023. Woodstock Rocks: From Acheulean to Iron Age in the Waterberg, Limpopo Province, South Africa. Southern African Field Archaeology, 18: Article 2788
Whitley, D.S. 1998. Finding rain in the desert: Landscape, gender and far western North American rock art. In: Chippendale, C. & Taçon, P. (eds) The Archaeology of Rock Art, 11–29. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Witelson, David M. 2023. Theatres of Imagery: A Performance Theory Approach to Rock Art Research. Oxford: BAR Publishing.
Yellen, J.E. 1977. Archaeological Approaches to the Present: Models for Reconstructing the Past. Michigan: University of Michigan.
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May 27, 2026
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The Later Stone Age of Welgevonden Rock Shelter, Waterberg, Limpopo Province, South Africa. (2026). Southern African Field Archaeology, 21. https://doi.org/10.36615/safa.21.4673.2026
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How to Cite
The Later Stone Age of Welgevonden Rock Shelter, Waterberg, Limpopo Province, South Africa. (2026). Southern African Field Archaeology, 21. https://doi.org/10.36615/safa.21.4673.2026
