Cultural Disruption Suggested by Dates of Late Holocene Burials, Southwestern Cape, South Africa

Abstract

Radiocarbon dates (3500–900 BP) from human skeletons (N=146) of late Holocene foragers from the Southwestern Cape coast are calibrated, incorporating estimates of the proportion of diet from marine sources using mixed calibration curves. As with Later Stone Age foragers throughout southern Africa, most were single burials without garb or objects. Cultural change may accompany the regional arrival of pastoralism, here benchmarked to a date for sheep bone at 2310–1890 cal BP (Spoegrivier). Forager population features that vary temporally include shifts in dietary protein sources, deaths from interpersonal violence, and the creation of cemeteries. Summed probability and kernel density methods indicate marked fluctuations in the frequency of burials through time, with a peak at ca. 1800 cal BP and a subsequent trough at ca. 1250 cal BP. This differs from the pattern of dates from occupational sites (N=149 from 49 sites). The δ13C values confirm a trend from marine to more mixed diets in more recent times. Perimortem trauma from interpersonal violence and the creation of cemeteries occur at or soon after the introduction of pastoralism to the region. In this era in which new people and ideas disrupted an ancient lifeway, novel burial clusters and cemeteries may mark attempts to control territory through direct ties with ancestors.