Heading to Cape Town today for the 2023 #archaeology field season at #BlombosCave !

Blombos Cave is located on the southern cape of South Africa and has a #MiddleStoneAge component between 100,000 and ~72,000 as well as a #LateStoneAge occupation

Artifacts important to the understanding of early human behavior have been found here such as the oldest drawing of #ochre on a silcrete flake at 73,000 and a ochre grinding toolkit at 100,000

Excavation starts Feb 4th! @AsiaArchaeologist on #tiktok

In 22 days I’ll be heading to the field for the first time since before the #pandemic started! I’ll be working at the #archaeology site of #BlombosCave in #SouthAfrica as part of #SapienCE

At the moment, the plan is I’ll be doing a lot of #3dscanning with the #Artec space spider (best name ever!). This is a trial run to try scanning the unit stratigraphy and any special finds— I’ve scanned objects before, but anyone have tips for scanning stratigraphy? #fieldwork

Photo by Magnus Haaland

Part 3 of my postdoc will be carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analyses of #LateStoneAge fish bone collagen from #BlombosCave, #KlasiesRiverMainSite, and #HoffmansRobberg
Many rocky reef fish like this Red Roman but I’m also excited to sample #Yellowtail (Seriola lalandi) a circumglobal migratory species
Robberg peninsula is a great fishing spot for this fish today so no surprise it is the most abundant by weight in some levels at Hoffman’s/Robberg Cave!
#archaeology #zooarchaeology #scicomm

Working on submitting destructive sampling permits for #StableIsotope analysis of #CapeFurSeal tooth enamel, fish #otoliths and bone collagen.
Here is the seal plan: 🦭
Comparing carbon and oxygen SI of #MiddleStoneAge seals from #KlasiesRiverMainSite and #BlombosCave with #LateStoneAge seals from #Hoffman’s/Robberg and #NelsonBayCave
Planning to compare the archaeological samples with present day seal populations to see if the #foraging environments have changed.
#archaeology #zooarchaeology

70,000 years ago were people at #BlombosCave focusing on #terrestrial animals? Exploiting fish from #estuarine environments? And was there a #seasonal component?

Based on Gökürk et al. 2023, seasonality of resources around the site may have been more pronounced? Very excited for their future work!

Very excited to see what they find as they compare these results (and others!) with the #archaeology, #zoorchaeology and #paleobotanical data around #BlombosCave

The #PalaeoAgulhasPlain is fascinating because on one hand you have a new swath of huge exposed land with a very different landscape and fauna than today!

As an example here is an image reconstructing some ideas of what the #LateGlacialMaximum (~20,000 years ago) Palaeo-Agulhas Plain might have looked like from Marean et al. 2020

The difference in land exposure of the South African coastline at 70,000 years greatly impacted local climate conditions #PalaeoAgulhasPlain

Wanted to share this really fascinating paper by fellow #SapienCE researchers highlighting the importance of local and regional #ClimateModels

They found around #BlombosCave
Summers were warmer, winters were colder
There was relatively less rainfall
The site was further from the ocean

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2022.107893

What fish are in the #zooarchaeology assemblage at #BlombosCave and #KlaisesRiverMainSite ? You can see some at the #TwoOceans #Aquarium in Cape Town, South Africa— here are three #endemic beauties!

You’ll find the Red Stumpnose and Galjoen from the #MiddleStoneAge at Blombos Cave and the White Stumpnose and Galjoen at Klasies.

(Data and map from van Niekerk 2011)

Going through the #MiddleStoneAge fish remains from the #archaeology site of #BlombosCave in #SouthAfrica and found this giant, 100kya vertebrae!

It belongs to a dusky or silver kob (Image below), a #fish considered delicious and sought after. Today fishing is restricted to try and keep population levels up. Some #MarineProtectedAreas are in place but more would likely help!

(Image 2 credits Marius Diemont 2020)

New introduction time! I’m #zooarchaeologist analyzing #MiddleStoneAge and #LateStoneAge fish and seals from the #SouthAfrican sites of #BlombosCave #KlasiesRiverMainSite and #HoffmansRobberg

I’m a #postdoc at the University of Bergen #UiB with the #SEAS programme for #marine #sustainability, #SapienCE and department of archaeology #AHKR

I will give periodic updates on my work and aim to contribute to the conversations here. 😊

Photo: #Utstein 13th century monastery near Stavanger