Howieson's Poort Shelter is a small

rock shelter A rock shelter (also rockhouse, crepuscular cave, bluff shelter, or abri) is a shallow cave-like opening at the base of a bluff or cliff. In contrast to solutional caves (karst), which are often many miles long or wide, rock shelters are alm ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

containing the archaeological site from which the

Howiesons Poort Howiesons Poort (also called HP) is a technological and cultural period characterized by material evidence with shared design features found in South Africa, Lesotho, and Namibia. It was named after the Howieson's Poort Shelter archaeological site ...

period in the

Middle Stone Age The Middle Stone Age (or MSA) was a period of African prehistory between the Early Stone Age and the Late Stone Age. It is generally considered to have begun around 280,000 years ago and ended around 50–25,000 years ago. The beginnings of ...

gets its name. This period lasted around 5,000 years, between roughly 65,800 BP and 59,500 BP. This period is important as it, together with the

Stillbay The Stillbay or Still Bay industry was named by archaeologists A. J. H. Goodwin and C. van Riet Lowe in 1929, and is a Middle Stone Age stone tool manufacturing style after the site of Stilbaai (also called Still Bay) in South Africa where it w ...

period 7,000 years earlier, provides the first evidence of human symbolism and technological skills that were later to appear in the

Upper Paleolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories ...

Naming

The poort was named after a "Mr Howison" but it was misspelt by Stapleton and Hewitt as Howieson pp. 110-111 “Father P. Stapleton … and Dr John Hewitt… excavated a small rock shelter .. The poort was named after a Mr Howison, but Stapleton and Hewitt (1927) spelled it Howieson in their publication and this spelling has been applied ever since to the stone tool industry that they first described there (Goodwin & Van Riet Lowe 1929).” and their error has been used ever since for the stone tool industry named after it.Goodwin AJH. van Riet Lowe C. (1929). The Stone Age cultures of South Africa. Annals of the South African Museum, 27. Note the site is always spelled with an apostrophe but the period can be spelt variably with and without it.

Description

The rock shelter occurs in a hill on the north side of the Howieson's Poort containing the main road into Grahamstown from

Port Elizabeth Gqeberha ( , ), formerly named Port Elizabeth, and colloquially referred to as P.E., is a major seaport and the most populous city in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is the seat of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipal ...

.A ''poort'' in

South African English South African English (SAfE, SAfEn, SAE, en-ZA) is the List of dialects of English, set of English language dialects native to South Africans. History British Empire, British settlers first arrived in the South African region in 1795, ...

is a mountain pass or gap, usually cut by a stream or river. The cave is halfway up a cliff and is deep and wide at the mouth, with a large

Real Yellowwood ''Podocarpus latifolius'' (real yellowwood, broad-leaved yellowwood, or South African yellowwood, , , , ) is a large evergreen tree up to 35 m high and 3 m trunk diameter, in the conifer family Podocarpaceae; it is the type species of t ...

tree growing in the deposit and "bent horizontal with the floor to allow its branches to spread into the open at the mouth of the shelter". The original Howiesons Poort period remains were covered very slowly due to the cave's position halfway up the cliff and to wind clearance. 20,000 years ago, however, a rock fall acted to protect the deposits near the front from wind erosion.

Excavation

It was excavated in the late 1920s, and then again in 1965 by Hilary and

Janette Deacon Janette Deacon (née Buckland, born 25 November 1939) is a South African archaeologist specialising in heritage management and rock art conservation. She has studied the changes in stone tools from sites in the southern Cape in relation to climat ...

. There are very little ''in situ'' deposits left. All the artifacts at the Howieson's Poort site were found below a barren layer about a foot thick in a black layer also about a foot thick. The stone tools were mostly large segments or 'crescents', obliquely backed blades and unifacial and bifacial points. There are no

rock painting In archaeology, rock arts are human-made markings placed on natural surfaces, typically vertical stone surfaces. A high proportion of surviving historic and prehistoric rock art is found in caves or partly enclosed rock shelters; this type al ...

s, nor bone or shell artifacts, though bone and shell artifacts are found in the deposits elsewhere of the Howiesons Poort period. Stone tools similar to those in the cave have been collected from hillsides above the rock shelter. Originally, and until the mid-1970s, the remains at Howiesons Poort Shelter were thought to belong to the Magosian period and so intermediate in time and technology between the Middle Stone Age and

Late Stone Age The Later Stone Age (LSA) is a period in African prehistory that follows the Middle Stone Age. The Later Stone Age is associated with the advent of modern human behavior in Africa, although definitions of this concept and means of studyi ...

. However,

optically stimulated luminescence In physics, optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) is a method for measuring doses from ionizing radiation. It is used in at least two applications: * Luminescence dating of ancient materials: mainly geological sediments and sometimes fired pot ...

dating pushed back dates for occupation by this period to 65,800 BP and 59,500 BP. Apart from the Howiesons Poort period, Deacon proposed that the cave may have been occupied more recently for several very short periods (ca. 18-19000 BP, ca. 9-10000 BP and ca. 3-4000 BP) by people who made fires but left few or no artefacts. However, this explanation is presented only as one of a number of possible scenarios.

References

{{Authority control Archaeological sites in South Africa Middle Stone Age Paleoanthropological sites Rock shelters Archaeological sites of Southern Africa

Naming

Description

Excavation

See also

References