Melkhoutboom Cave is an archaeological site dating to the Later Stone Age, located in the Zuurberg Mountains, Cape Folded Mountain Belt, in the Addo Elephant National Park, Sarah Baartman District Municipality in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa.
History Investigation of Melkhoutboom Cave and other sites in the Eastern Cape Province was spurred by earlier archaeological discoveries, including the discovery in the 1850s by Thomas Holden Bowker of a number of stone artefacts at the mouth of the Great Fish River, about southeast of the cave. John Hewitt, the director of the Albany Museum in Grahamstown from 1910 to 1958, excavated over twenty caves and rock shelters in the area – including an excavation at Melkhoutboom from 1930 to 1931 – and published his findings in a number of papers, which attracted the interest of collectors and helped to build up a large collection of artefacts at the museum. In 1963 Hilary Deacon of the Albany Museum initiated a research project “The Prehistory of the Eastern Cape” as a means of continuing Hewitt's research and evaluating the collection of artefacts his research had helped to amass. The project involved the excavation of a number of rock shelters in the Grahamstown area, including Wilton Large Rockshelter and Cave, Glen Craig, Roodekrantz, and Spitzkop. Hewitt himself was also involved in excavations at Melkhoutboom, as well as Middelkop, Tefelburg Hall, and several sites near the Kabeljous River Mouth.
One of the main focuses of the "Prehistory of the Eastern Cape" research project was analysing the subsistence ecology of human populations of the early Holocene era in southern Africa. The information gained from Hewitt's work, specifically the excavations at Melkhoutboom Cave in 1967 and 1969, were an important factor in steering the program's focus in this direction.
Geography Melkhoutboom Cave is located in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, about 80 kilometres north of the coastal city of Port Elizabeth and about northeast of the Klasies River Mouth, the location of another important South African archaeological site. The cave is situated within a steep ravine in the Cape Folded Mountain Belt, a range of mountains that marks the boundary between the more tropical ecological zone of the inland Karoo and the coastal plain.
Geography of the Eastern Cape The Eastern Cape can be divided into four main geographic areas: the coastal strip, the coastal plain, the Cape Folded Mountain Belt, and the Karoo-Cape Midlands. The coastal strip consists mostly of sand beaches bordered by dunes to the north. There is little vegetation, and subsistence in this area during the Later Stone Age was probably mainly shellfish – as evidenced by the abundance of shell middens dating to within the last 12,000 years – as well as fish, crustaceans, great white sharks, and birds. The coastal plain is a strip of land approximately wide, beginning at the edge of the coastal strip and rising to an elevation of at the base of the Cape Folded Mountain Belt. This area is mainly grassland and shrubland, with many succulents and other edible plants and shrubs. The Cape Folded Mountain Belt runs east–west across the Cape, dividing the coastal plain and the Karoo-Cape Midlands. This area contains grassland, shrubland, fynbos, and scree forest, all with a variety of vegetation; the fauna is also varied, including antelope (including grysbok, duiker, and bushbuck), wild pigs, and other small- to medium-sized mammals. The Karoo-Cape Midlands is located inland of the Cape Folded Mountain Belt, sloping upward toward the Great Escarpment at the southern end of the Karoo Basin. This area has a much drier climate than the zones farther south; severe droughts are common, and this was likely the case in the Middle Stone Age as well, affecting habitability in this area. A variety of large mammals, such as rhinoceros, elephants, hippopotamus, wildebeest, eland, and large antelope, used to inhabit this area but have since migrated or gone extinct due to changes in indigenous vegetation caused by overgrazing.
Geography of Melkhoutboom Cave Melkhoutboom Cave is located about from the coast in the Cape Folded Mountain Belt, inside a steep, forested ravine that runs north to south along the northernmost ridge of the Suurberg Range and ends at the Beans River. The environment within the ravine can be described as evergreen temperate forest, and there is a diverse assortment of vegetation throughout the ravine and the surrounding area, including tall trees throughout the ravine and surrounding the opening of the cave, which is about 6 meters above the floor of the ravine.
The cave itself is about wide at its entrance, and about deep at its deepest point, with a domed roof . The potential area that could be occupied within the cave measures about . At the back of the main cave is a higher, smaller cave that shows some evidence of occupation in the form of ash and scattered artefacts, but has not been excavated.
Excavation Melkhoutboom Cave was first excavated in 1930 by John Hewitt, whose findings prompted it to be included in the Albany Museum's “Prehistory of the Eastern Cape” project, initiated in 1963. Excavations took place at the cave as part of this project in 1967 and 1969. The initial small-scale excavation of a test pit in 1967 was conducted to confirm and clarify the findings from Hewitt's original excavation in the early 1930s. The subsequent excavation in 1969 was planned based on this initial excavation, extending and building upon it. Both excavations used the same grid system running north–south and east–west.
Of the approximately 150 square meters of “living area” inside the cave, about a fifth has been excavated, and only half of that area has been excavated all the way down to bedrock. This was primarily due to constraints on time and resources, which stopped excavation from being extended to promising areas or even bringing the whole of the excavated area down to bedrock; instead, efforts were focused on obtaining a large sample of artefacts and floral and faunal remains from the area already excavated.
The excavated area of Melkhoutboom Cave was divided into stratigraphic units based on soil composition and cultural content. The names given to these units and their estimated ages based on radiocarbon dates of hearths or artefacts are as follows, from bedrock to surface: Basal Unit (15,400 years BP), Rock Fall Unit (10,500 years BP), Medium Brown Series Unit (7,660 years BP), Wilton Base Marker Unit (7,300 years BP), Marker Unit (indirectly dated by comparison to preceding and overlying units), Wedge Unit (6,980 years BP), Main Bedding Unit (5,900 years BP), Cut Away Frontal Unit (2,870 years BP), the Overlie of the Main Bedding Unit, and the Surface Unit. The Wilton Base Marker Unit in particular appears to represent a major technological break from underlying units based on the cultural material found.
Material culture/findings Features A number of non-artefactual features were recorded inside the cave. Hearths and ash constituted a large portion of the excavated deposits, and the excavated area also included a number of pits that appear to have been used for storing fruits used for their oils. Most of these pits have been dated to about 3,000 years BP, and are comparable to pits of similar ages found at nearby Boomplaas Cave.
During his 1930 excavation, Hewitt noted a number of wooden pegs stuck into cracks in the walls of the cave. He did not record the number of pegs or their positioning, and none of these pegs remained by the time the 1967 and 1969 excavations took place, although there were some bits of wood found within some fissures in the cave walls. The 1969 excavation also unearthed five evenly spaced post holes about in diameter and deep, one of which still contained a shard of wood, which may be evidence of some sort of modifications made to the inside of the cave.
Two cave paintings were found inside Melkhoutboom Cave – one frog painted in yellow and red, and one bushbuck ewe painted below it, the latter being more faded. Both paintings were located high on the cave walls outside of easy reach, suggesting symbolic or totemic significance.Deacon, J (1969). "Re-excavation and description of the Wilton type-site, Albany District, Eastern Cape." Unpublished M.A. Thesis: University of Cape Town.
The 1969 excavation uncovered two burials, both of children. The first was of an infant less than a year old, buried in a narrow shaft capped by a flat quartzite rock. The mouth of the burial shaft opens into the Wilton Base Marker Unit, and the remains have been dated to 7,300 years BP. No grave goods were associated with this burial. The second burial was of a child about five years old, buried in a squatting position, again in a narrow shaft – this time, however, opening into the Main Bedding Unit and capped by a 6-millimeter-deep layer of powdered red ochre as well as three large stones on top of the ochre. This burial was associated with several grave goods: three notched shells and 14 baked earthen beads, which are thought to be part of a necklace.
Artefacts The 1967 and 1969 excavations uncovered numerous artefacts that can be sorted in many ways, but are often sorted based on material, with lithics being considered separately from artefacts made from materials other than stone.
Lithics The stone artefacts found at Melkhoutboom are used as the basis for sorting all of the artefacts in the Melkhoutboom sequence into three different artefact industries based on the typology of their lithics: the Wilton Industry, found in the Wilton Base Marker and overlying units; the Albany Industry, found in the Medium Brown Series and Rockfall units; and the Robberg Industry, found in the Basal unit. These industries were based on terminology already adopted by archaeologists in the Eastern Cape region.
The Wilton Industry is primarily characterised by microliths and hafted tools, often made from chalcedony or silcrete. The two earlier industries are primarily composed of quartzite flakes and are therefore easily distinguished from the later Wilton Industry.
Lithics belonging to the Wilton Industry can be further sorted into classes based on their form and function. Among the types of stone tools found at Melkhoutboom were chunks, chips, cores, core reduced pieces, battered pieces and debitage, unmodified flakes, retouched and modified flakes, scrapers, segments, backed bladelets, borers, adzes, anvils, hammerstones, grindstones, milled edge pebbles, and other broken or miscellaneous pieces.
Besides stone tools, other stone artefacts found at Melkhoutboom included red and yellow ochre, pieces of shale and micaceous sandstone (which are not found naturally in or near the cave and were therefore likely imports into the site), and unmodified slabs of quartzite and quartzitic sandstone, some associated with hearths.
Other artefacts artefacts in a variety of materials were found at Melkhoutboom and, like lithics, they have been analysed as evidence of the activities that may have taken place at the site. These non-lithic artefacts were analysed in conjunction with lithic material, since stone tools are often used to manufacture or modify artefacts made from other materials.