Shellfish exploitation during the Oakhurst at Klipdrift Cave, southern Cape, South Africa

Ryano, Kokeli P.; Niekerk, Karen L. van; Wurz, Sarah; Henshilwood, Christopher S.

dc.creator	Ryano, Kokeli P.
dc.creator	Niekerk, Karen L. van
dc.creator	Wurz, Sarah
dc.creator	Henshilwood, Christopher S.
dc.date	2020-11-24T10:29:51Z
dc.date	2020-11-24T10:29:51Z
dc.date	2019
dc.date.accessioned	2022-10-20T12:01:03Z
dc.date.available	2022-10-20T12:01:03Z
dc.identifier	Ryano, K. P., van Niekerk, K. L., Wurz, S., & Henshilwood, C. S. (2019). Shellfish exploitation during the Oakhurst at Klipdrift Cave, southern Cape, South Africa. South African Journal of Science, 115(9-10), 1-9.
dc.identifier	DOI: 10.17159/sajs.2019/5578
dc.identifier	http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12661/2541
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12661/2541
dc.description	Full text article. Also available at https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2019/5578
dc.description	Klipdrift Cave in the southern Cape, South Africa, provides new insights into shellfish harvesting during the Later Stone Age (14-9 ka) period associated with the Oakhurst techno-complex. Two shellfish species dominate: Turbo sarmaticus and Dinoplax gigas. An abrupt shift in the relative frequencies of these species occurs in the middle of the sequence with T. sarmaticus almost completely replacing D. gigas. The shift in dominant species is likely due to environmental change caused by fluctuating sea levels rather than change in sea surface temperatures. The shellfish assemblage shows that local coastal habitats at Klipdrift Cave were somewhat different from those of contemporaneous sites in the southern Cape. Although the shellfish specimens are smaller at Klipdrift Cave than those from Middle Stone Age localities such as Blombos Cave, there is no robust indication that larger human populations at Klipdrift Cave during the Oakhurst period might have caused this change in size. Environmental or ecological factors could have restricted shellfish growth rates as some experimental works have suggested, but this possibility also remains to be further explored.
dc.language	en
dc.publisher	Academy of Science of South Africa
dc.subject	Shell-fishing
dc.subject	Environment
dc.subject	Terminal pleistocene
dc.subject	Coastal subsistence
dc.subject	Klipdrift Cave
dc.subject	Shellfish harvesting
dc.subject	Shellfish species
dc.subject	Predation pressure
dc.subject	Palaeoclimate
dc.subject	South Africa
dc.title	Shellfish exploitation during the Oakhurst at Klipdrift Cave, southern Cape, South Africa
dc.type	Article