2022/08/23 by Thomas, Marc
#FOS: Social sciences
paper · doi:10.48728/antipodes.220116
In this article we present the preliminary results of the technological study of the lithic industries from the top of the Bushman Shelter sequence (BRS). This shelter and its lithic collections are located at many interfaces. First, the shelter is located on the edge of the Highvelds in the north of the country, a few kilometres from the canyon formed by the Blyde River, which marks a clear boundary with the low plains of eastern southern Africa (Lowvelds). It is also a cultural interface, since, at the transition between the Pleistocene and the Holocene, the lithic industries described by N. Walker in the chrono-cultural sequence of the Matopos mountain range (Zimbabwe) are expressed to the north, while to the south the lamellar lithic industries of the Robberg have given way to an original technical tradition focused on the knapping of flakes and the use of scrapers: the Oakhurst lithic complex. The technological analysis of the BRS top sequence lithic material clearly assimilates the latter to the Oakhurst technical traditions (as often proposed but never formally demonstrated). This makes BRS the most northerly Oakhurst occurrence.