Browsing by Author "Van der Merwe, N J"

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    Cranial injuries to Later Stone Age children from the Modder River mouth, Western Cape Province, South Africa
    (The South African Archaeological Society, 2004) Pfeiffer, S; Van der Merwe, N J
    The location of a burial of three juvenile skeletons, discovered in 1980 and dated to about 2600 BP, was confirmed through guidance from the discoverers. The site was near the mouth of the Modder River, Malmesbury District, Western Cape, South Africa. Skeletal ages at death are approximately 1-1.5, 6-7 and 12-13 years, based on dental and skeletal development. All three crania show indications of trauma that occurred while the bone was fresh and before the skeletons were positioned for burial. The size and shape of the perforations and indentations are consistent with use of the same type of object to inflict all injuries. This object had an approximately circular diameter of no more than 15 mm and was tapered to a point at one end, like a digging stick. This instance is discussed in the context of other, previously reported, cases of probable violent death in the prehistoric Western Cape.
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    Sourcing the ore from the Drierivier copper smelting site in central Namibia, using lead isotope fingerprinting
    (2005) Miller, D E; Young, S M M; Green, W A; Van der Merwe, N J; Sandelowsky, B
    Copper smelting residues from C. AD 1650 found at the Drierivier site near Rehoboth in central Namibia have 207Pb/206Pb isotope ratios that match a particular deposit at Swartmodder, but are markedly different from other known occurrences in the Rehoboth–Windhoek areas. For this reason, precise lead isotope determination is not necessary to source the ore, and raw peak height ratios obtained by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry are sufficient. This characteristic signature is present in all samples of malachite ore, slag, and copper prills collected on the site. Significantly, it is absent from a sample of local native copper, as well as from seven copper beads found elsewhere in central Namibia. This not only identifies the probable source of malachite ore but also provides a powerful tool for provenancing copper artefacts made at the Drierivier site, distinguishing them from those made elsewhere in the Namibian highlands.
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    Stable carbon isotopes and prehistoric diets in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa
    (1979) Silberbauer, Francis Bruce; Van der Merwe, N J
    The research reported in this thesis involves the measurement of stable carbon isotope ratios in human bone collagen as a means of reconstructing prehistoric diets. The sample population includes 67 skeletons of hunter-gatherers, pastoralists and agriculturalists from the Holocene of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. The aims of the thesis include the testing, through direct quantitative measurements, of the validity of archaeological conclusions about prehistoric human behaviour in the Eastern Cape. Secondly, the usefulness and applicability of the 13c tracer technique is demonstrated in what is arguable the most complex situation an archaeologist is likely to encounter. The natural environment included c3 and c4 plants, browsing and grazing ungulates, and a marine component - all subject to environmental change over the period under study - while the cultural environment included three different subsistence systems plus transition stages between them. A third, or subsidiary goal, was to test whether burial practices can be correlated with subsistence economies in this situation - that is, whether ritual and dietary behaviour formed part of some larger cultural whole such as "pastoralists" - in order to be able to assign individuals to socio-economic groups on the basis of burial pattern. The results of the laboratory analysis realize these goals with varying degrees of success and with important consequences for the archaeologist.