The stone tool sequence at little muck shelter, middle Limpopo valley : pre- and post-contact forager technologies

Abstract

The Later Stone Age of the middle Limpopo Valley is known through several excavated shelters and subsequent lithic analyses. Scholars have argued that it demonstrates a series of changes that appear linked to shifts in the local peopling of the region, in particular the arrival of farmer groups. Little Muck Shelter was one of the first excavated sites in the region with preserved forager material culture and it was studied because of its proximity to Leokwe Hill, an Iron Age site, with the intention of understanding local social relations. The shelter’s occupation dates from the last centuries BC until AD 1300, with several notable changes. However, the sequence was not fully studied, contributing to the site's re-excavation in 2020. This report presents the first analysis of stone tools retrieved from this renewed interest in the site, with two primary goals in mind: first, to compare the assemblage to other assemblages around southern Africa of a similar age and assess if the site’s stone toolkit is similar to other Wilton-period assemblages, including Amadzimba and Bambata, and second, to examine change in stone tools across the contact divide. This is achieved by examining the stone tools using comparable typologies and contrasting stone tool types between different periods and across southern Africa. The study shows that although a number of similar tool types in comparable frequencies were recovered from Little Muck, the site has certain differences to other Wilton assemblages. Of interest is a change in certain tool forms that occurs in the early first millennium AD, but which are morphologically consistent with Wilton tool types, when farmer groups appear in the region. The study concludes by arguing that forager toolkits were equipped to deal with shifts in behaviour and activity patterns in the middle Limpopo Valley.