A Late Holocene community burial area: Evidence of diverse mortuary practices in the Western Cape, South Africa

Abstract

Over several decades, human skeletal remains from at least twelve individuals (males, females, children and infants) were recovered from a small area (ca. 10 x 10 m) on the eastern shore of Table Bay, Cape Town, near the mouth of the Diep River where it empties into the sea. Two groups, each comprising four individuals, appear to have been buried in single graves. Unusually for this region, several skeletons were interred with large numbers of ostrich eggshell (OES) beads. In some cases, careful excavation enabled recovery of segments of beadwork. One collective burial held items including an ostrich egg-shell flask, a tortoise carapace bowl, a fragmentary bone point or linkshaft and various lithic artefacts. This group appears to have died together and been buried expediently. A mid-adult woman from this group sustained perimortem blunt-force trauma to her skull, very likely the cause of her death. This case adds to the developing picture of interpersonal violence associated with a period of subsistence intensification among late Holocene foragers. Radiocarbon dates obtained for nine skeletons may overlap but given the uncertainties associated with marine carbon input, we cannot constrain the date range more tightly than 1900-1340 calBP (at 2 sigma). The locale appears to have been used by a community as a burial ground, perhaps regularly for several generations, or on a single catastrophic occasion, or some combination thereof. The evidence documents regional and temporal variation in burial practices among late Holocene foragers of the south-western Cape.