New field work at Rose Cottage Cave (eastern Free State)

Rose Cottage Cave has a long significant regional sequence encompassing Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age occupations. After the excavations of Berry Malan in the 1940s and Peter Beaumont in 1962, Prof. Lyn Wadley investigated the site from 1987 to 1997 as part of a research programme, providing extremely valuable and important data as well as publications relevant for the southern African Stone Age archaeology. However, since these remarkable works have been undertaken, there has been less archaeological research, especially concerning the Middle Stone Age in the eastern Free State, which now calls for a revival. This project represents a great opportunity to give a new impulse to this region and is part of a broader venture aiming to understand technological developments, cultural changes, and innovations within the Middle Stone Age of Marine Isotope Stage 5 in southern Africa. The field activities at Rose Cottage Cave will be limited and focused on re-opening and cleaning the previous excavation areas, and documenting and sampling the archaeological profiles. Profiles will be excavated only to an extent necessary to stabilize the deposits before closing the site. The fieldwork at Rose Cottage Cave follows recent preliminary studies that we conducted on the lithic assemblages recovered during Wadley/Harper’s excavation as well as Malan’s excavation. In order to complete these ongoing studies, strengthen or rather elaborate statements, and publish results, the acquisition of new field data is essential. In parallel, a growing interest in different parts of the cultural sequence emerged over the last years, and fieldwork as well as sampling will be beneficial in this respect.