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New radiocarbon dates and the herder occupation at Kasteelberg B, South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2017

Karim Sadr ,
C. Britt Bousman ,
Thomas A. Brown ,
Kamela G. Sekonya ,
Elias Sideras-Haddad  and
Andrew B. Smith
Karim Sadr*
Affiliation:
Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, 1 Jan Smuts Avenue, Braamfontein 2000, Johannesburg, South Africa
C. Britt Bousman
Affiliation:
Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, 1 Jan Smuts Avenue, Braamfontein 2000, Johannesburg, South Africa Department of Anthropology, Texas State University, 601 University Drive, San Marcos, TX 78666, USA
Thomas A. Brown
Affiliation:
Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 7000 East Avenue, Livermore, CA 94550, USA
Kamela G. Sekonya
Affiliation:
iThemba LABS, PO Box 722, Somerset West 7129, South Africa School of Physics, University of the Witwatersrand, 1 Jan Smuts Avenue, Braamfontein 2000, Johannesburg, South Africa
Elias Sideras-Haddad
Affiliation:
School of Physics, University of the Witwatersrand, 1 Jan Smuts Avenue, Braamfontein 2000, Johannesburg, South Africa
Andrew B. Smith
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa
*
*Author for correspondence (Email: karim.sadr@wits.ac.za)
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Abstract

The archaeological sequence at Kasteelberg B, in the Western Cape of South Africa, spans a millennium and covers several distinct occupational phases in the early pastoralist settlement history of the region. Attempts to understand that history through coordinating archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence have proved problematic. The refined programme of radiocarbon dating presented here sheds further light on the different phases of occupation. More remarkably, it suggests, despite changes in material culture, the persistence of a single population over time, rather than population replacement as has been previously conjectured.

Keywords

South Africasouth-western CapeSanKhoekhoepastoralistAMS radiocarbon datingBayesian modelling

Information

Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 91 , Issue 359 , October 2017 , pp. 1299 - 1313
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2017 

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