Kathu Pan Sites

The Kathu Pan is situated some 5.5km northwest of Kathu, at the boundary of three farms, Sacha 468 (Sites 1-5), Farm Kathu 465 (Site 7) and Farm Sims 462 (Sites 6 and 8-11).Kathu Pan 1 was the first site identified, excavated in 1975 by A.J.B. Humphreys after handaxes and faunal remains were observed eroding out of a subsidence there (Beaumont, P.B. 1990. Kathu Pan. In Beaumont, P.B. & Morris, D. 1990. Guide to archaeological sites in the Northern Cape. Kimberley: McGregor Museum: 75). Peter Beaumont followed up with three excavation seasons in 1978. Survey work following these excavations led to the discovery and subsequent excavation of ten further sites. Each of these sites is accounted for separately as an individual site (see http://www.sahra.org.za/content/kathu-pan-1 etc).Together, these 11 sites, and the pan within which they are located, cover some 250 000m2 and are thought to comprise 2 billion artefacts, marking two phases of the Middle Stone Age, two of the Early Stone Age and most of the Later Stone Age. At Kathu Pan 1, alone, this assemblage has led to the discovery of the earliest evidence for hafting of stone points (Wilkins, J. et al. Evidence for early hafted hunting technology. Science, Vol. 338, Nov. 16, 2012, p. 942). This technology has been shown to have existed some 200 000 years earlier than previously thought., raising the possibility that our hominin ancestors used collective hunting strategies.Aside from the density of artefacts, the Pan sites contain goodly quantities of tooth enamel and whole teeth of extinct and extant faunal species that has facilitated not only dating of the strata, but also reconstructions of the palaeoenvironment, which indicate a grassier environment dominated by grazers, rather than browsers. The Pan, which is fed by an aquifer, rather than surface water, presents unparalleled information on palaeoenvironmental sequences in the Kalahari Basin (Butzer, K.W., 1983. Kathu Vlei and the Southern Kalahari, in: Maguire, J.M. (Ed.) Guide book, Kalahari and Namib deserts - Excursion guide for SASQUA 1983: Southern Hemisphere International Symposium on Late Cainozoic Palaeoclimates of the Southern Hemisphere, 1983. South African Society for Quaternary Research: Cooperative Scientific Programme Division, C.S.I.R., Lobamba, Swaziland, p. 39.). The Pan is one of only seven southern African sites that contains Early Stone Age artefacts in association with faunal remains in near primary context, and is one of very few inland, open air sites of this antiquity, where most are cave sites along the coast (Walker, S. 2013. Kathu Pan: Location and Significance A report requested by SAHRA for the purpose of nomination).The Kathu Pan sites, as deep-time markers of chronological change through time and sensitive faunal and palynological indicators of palaeoenvironments should be considered within the context as the nearby Wonderwerk Cave which obtained National Heritage Site status in 2009.An iconic handaxe from Kathu Pan 1 has, further, entered popular consciousness in South Africa and internationally (Walker, S. Ibid). Exceptional for its size, symmetry and the extraordinary exploitation of the morphology of the banded ironstone it is made on, it has been adopted as the image for a stamp by the South African Post Office; it travelled with an international exhibition entitled "Africa, the art of a continent", on display in London, Berlin and New York and has inspired poetry (Cope, M. 2005. Ghaap: sonnets from the Northern Cape. Kwela, Roggebaai) and a literary work (Martin, J. 2008. A Millimetre of Dust)