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SASQUA 2012

13 to 16 September 2012

Gobabeb

Training and Research Centre

Gobabeb, Namibia

Celebrating 50 Years of

Namib Desert Research at Gobabeb

Celebrating 50 Years of Namib Desert Research at Gobabeb - September 2012

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Welcome

On behalf of the organising committee we welcome you to the (normally)

biennial SASQUA 2012 Conference. We trust you will enjoy this meeting in the

heart of the Namib Desert, with its unique landscape and environments.

Venue

The Gobabeb Training and Research Centre is located on the Kuiseb River on

the northern boundary of the Namib Sand Sea. For details and directions, go

to: http://www.gobabebtrc.org/

Transport

Arrangements will be made for airport transfers from Walvis Bay for all those

who respond to email queries.

Presentations

Oral papers: 15 minutes will be allocated per paper, followed by 5 minutes for

discussion.

Poster papers: Posters should be put up for display as soon as possible. A

formal poster session will be held on Friday the 14 of September at 16h00.

Lunches

Lunches are included for registered delegates.

Social Functions

Thursday 13 September 18h00: Meet and Greet

Sunday 16 September 19h00: Conference dinner (informal dress)

Excursions Considering the venue, no official excursions are planned, but rather

delegates are encouraged to make the most of their surroundings on

Saturday and Sunday afternoon.

http://www.gobabebtrc.org/


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In Memory of

HILARY JOHN DEACON

(1936 –2010)

TIMOTHY COOPER PARTRIDGE

(1942 –2009)

JOHANN CARL VOGEL

(1932-2012)

SASQUA 2012 – PROGRAMME


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PROGRAMME

Thursday 13 September

17h00 - 18h00 Registration at conference venue

18h00 Meet and Greet at conference venue

Friday 14 September

08h00 Late registrations

08h45 - 09h00 Announcements and welcome by the President of

SASQUA, Brian Chase

09h00 - 10h20 Session 1:

Chair: S. Armitage

O1: Dune generations and interdigitated aeolian

and water-lain interdune deposits in the northern

Namib Sand Sea.

(A.E.C. Stone)

O2: The age, genesis and significance of the sterile

dune sand at Blombos, South Africa.

(S.J. Armitage, J. Hassall)

O3: Post-depositional modification of Kalahari fluvial

and aeolian sediments and the implications thereof

for OSL dating of the main Kalahari dunes.

(R. McG. Miller)

Please refer to the number in bold before each paper for cross-

referencing to the abstracts. O = Oral P = Poster

Abstracts are listed numbered, in order of presentation after the

programme



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O4: The palaeosols at Vaalputs, Bushmanland

plateau, Northern Cape, South Africa: stratigraphy

and field evidence for complex structures.

(A. Logue, M.A.G. Andreoli, C. Clarke, O. Majodina,

F. Netterberg, I. Stengel)

10h20 - 10h50 TEA

10h50 - 12h30 Session 2:

Chair: G.A. Botha

O5: Diagenetic evolution of the Boteti delta,

Makgadikadi pans, north-west Botswana

(S. Ringrose, L. Cassidy, W. Matheson, S. Coetzee, S.

Diskin and A. Mackay)

O6: The age, geomorphic, palaeoenvironmental

and anthropological significance of silcretes on the

South African coastal plain.

(D. L. Roberts, S. Niederman and C. Musekiwa)

O7: Late Pliocene woody vegetation from the Upper

Burgi member, near Ileret, Koobi Fora, East Turkana

Basin, Kenya.

(M.K. Bamford)

O8: From the Cape to the Okavango Delta: an

assessment of C3 and C4 grass phytoliths along

modern climatic gradients for paleoclimatic

interpretation.

(C. Cordova)

12h30 - 13h30 LUNCH

13h30 - 14h50 Session 3:

Chair: B.M. Chase

O9: A Holocene desert margin pollen record from

dung deposits at Nauwkluft, Namibia.

(L. Scott, G. Gil-Romera, G.A. Brook, and E. Marais)



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O10: A new record of past environmental change

from the Mfabeni Peatland, South Africa:

stratigraphy, chronology and sediment

characterisation.

(J. Finch, S. Pillay, M. Humphries, T. Hill, and C.

Benitez-Nelson)

O11: Multi-proxy evidence of late Quaternary

palaeoenvironmental change, Cathedral Peak

region, KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg, South Africa.

(J. Lodder, J. Finch and T. Hill)

O12: Monocots in the Middle Stone Age at Sibudu

Cave, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

(C. Sievers)

14h50 - 15h20 TEA

16h00 - 17h00 Session 4:

Chair: A.S.C. Carr

O13: Late Quaternary palaeoenvironments of the

southern Cape, South Africa: palynological

evidence from three coastal wetlands.

(L.J. Quick, M.E. Meadows, B.M. Chase, A.S. Carr,

M.D. Bateman, J. Baade and R. Mäusbacher)

O14: Pollen-based vegetation dynamics for the past

16 kyr from a rock hyrax midden located in the

Cederberg Mountains –Western Cape (De Rif).

(V. Valsecchi, L. Truc, L. Quick, M. E. Meadows, and

B.M. Chase)

16h00 - 17h00 Session 5: Poster Session

P1: The rise and fall of the West African Monsoon:

fluctuations of Lake Chad over the last deglaciation

and Holocene.

(S. J. Armitage, C.S. Bristow, N.A. Drake)



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P2: Characterisation of organic matter using

pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry

(py-GC/MS): developing applications for

palaeoenvironmental research

(A. Boom, A.S. Carr, B.M. Chase, M.E. Meadows, Z.E.

Roberts, M. Britton, A.M.J. Cumming)

P3: Holocene landscape and ecosystem dynamics

in central Southern Africa

(S. L. Burrough, D. S.G. Thomas and K. J. Willis)

P4: Rock hyrax middens as southern African

palaeoenvironmental archives.

(B.M. Chase, V. Valsecchi, L. Truc, M.E. Meadows, L.

Scott, L. Quick, A.S. Carr, A. Boom, and P.J. Reimer)

P5: Hyrax middens: a southern perspective on long-

term African climate change.

(B.M. Chase, V. Valsecchi, L. Truc, M.E. Meadows, L.

Scott, L. Quick, A.S. Carr, A. Boom, and P.J. Reimer)

P6: In the pooh or out?: pollen taphonomy in

coprolites.

(G. Gil-Romera, F. Neumann, L. Scott, Y. Fernández-

Jalvo)

P7: AnNa Waters pilot project: WP1 Long-term

ecosystem dynamics and anthropogenic processes

of the Cuvelai catchment.

(J. Käyhkö, P. Alho, F. Becker, R.G. Bryant, S.D.

Gurney, M. Hipondoka, J.S. Jauhiainen, K. Jylhä, V.

Kinyaga, N. Käyhkö, B. Mauz, A. Nehemia, G. L.

Miguel, C. Riberio, J. Röhrig, T. Saarinen, A. Teixeira-

Pinto, B. Vehviläinen, G.S.F. Wiggs and K. White)

P8: A 2000 yr high-resolution diatom record at

Princess Vlei, Cape Town.

(K. Kirsten, M.E. Meadows)

P9: Terrestrial gastropods from Blombos Cave, South

Africa: research potential.

(G. H.J. Langejans, G. L. Dusseldorp, Christopher S.

Henshilwood)



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P10: Orientation of maximum horizontal stress of the

western and south-eastern offshore basins of South

Africa.

(A. Logue, O. Heidbach, M.A.G. Andreoli, Z. Ben-

Avraham, A. Le Roex)

P11: Biome organisation at the Fynbos-Succulent

Karoo ecotone on the Kamiesberg granites.

(J. MacPherson, L. Gillson, T. Hoffman)

P12: Note on the fossil fauna and flora at Ongongo

Springs, Damaraland.

(H. Mocke)

P13: Palaeoclimate and ecosystems of the

Pleistocene in South Africa as archived in the

Kalkkop Crater Lake deposit.

(P. Mthembi, D. Roberts, C. Harris, R. Smith)

P14: Optically stimulated luminescence dating of

marine terraces of the Skeleton Coast, Namibia.

(A. Nguno, H. Stollhofen and I. Stanistreet)

P15: A preliminary assessment of bedform change

following high floods on the Kuiseb River, central

Namibia.

(S. Ringrose, W. Matheson, L. Cassidy, M. Seely)

P16: 18,000 years of grassland evolution in the

summer rainfall region of South Africa – evidence

from Mahwaqa Mountain, KwaZulu-Natal.

(F.H. Neumann, G.A. Botha, and L. Scott)

P17: A varied ecological profile for Paranthropus

robustus.

(C.M. Steininger)

P18: Rain in the Desert Sand: unsaturated zone

profiles of chloride for recharge rate assessment and

observations from nitrate profiles.

(A. E. C. Stone, W. M. Edmunds, D. S. G. Thomas)



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Saturday 15 September 09h00 - 10h20 Session 6:

Chair: M.K. Bamford

O15: Climate proxies and occupation trends in the

post-Pleistocene archaeological record for the

Namib Desert.

(J. Kinahan)

O16: Sibudu charcoal: campfires and how they were

used.

(S.J. Lennox and M.K. Bamford)

O17: Changes in vegetation and stone artefact

technology across the MIS 4/3 transition at Klein

Kliphuis rock shelter, Western Cape.

(A. Mackay and C. Cartwright)

O18: A hazy shade of winter: the influence of

climatic changes in Middle Stone Age foraging

behaviour in South Africa.

(G. Langejans and G. Dusseldorp)

10h20 - 10h50 TEA

10h50 - 12h30 Session 7:

Chair: M.E. Meadows

O19: Two Hundred Years of Rainfall Variability in

Namibia.

(S. E. Nicholson)

O20: Diatoms as indicators of climatic and

limnological change in the Wilderness Embayment,

southern Cape coast, South Africa.

(K. Kirsten, M.E. Meadows, J. Baade, S. Franz, B.

Reinwarth, T. Haberzettl, R. Mäusbacher)

O21: The application of pdf-based botanical-

climatological transfer functions to southern Africa

fossil pollen sequences: a quantitative reconstruction

of palaeoclimatic variables over the last 20 kyr at

Wonderkrater, South Africa.



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(L. Truc, B. M. Chase, C. Favier, R. Cheddadi, M. E.

Meadows, L. Scott, M. Chevalier)

O22: Late Quaternary environmental change in

central southern Africa: a case for considering the

role of variability.

(D. S.G. Thomas and S. L. Burrough)

12h30 - 13h30 LUNCH

13h30 - 13h30 SASQUA Council Meeting

16h00 - 17h00 The Future of Geomorphological Research at

Gobabeb: a discussion.

Chair: Sue Ringrose

Sunday 16 September

09h00 - 10h20 Session 8:

Chair: L Scott

O23: Sedimentary dynamics and depositional

controls for the western seaboard of the Cape

Peninsula, South Africa.

(M.R. MacHutchon, J.S. Compton)

O24: Floods, wind, time: site formation on the Uniab

River coastal fan, Skeleton Coast National Park,

Namibia

(Avery, G., Fosse, P.)

O25: Marine geophysics and geological modelling

of offshore Late Quaternary palaeoshorelines in the

southern Cape, South Africa.

(H. C. Cawthra, C. W. Marean, E. C. Fisher and J. S.

Compton)

O26: A marine record of hydroclimate from

southwestern Africa over the past 145 kyr.

(J. A. Collins, S. Mulitza, A. Govin, E. Schefuß, G.

Mollenhauer and R. Tiedemann)

10h20 - 10h50 TEA



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10h50 - 12h30 Session9:

Chair: B.M. Chase

O27: Phytolith assemblages from dental calculus:

potential for studying paleodiets of prehistoric,

historic and recent megaherbivores.

(C. Cordova and G. Avery)

O28: Evidence from U-series dates of speleothems

for humid periods in the Namib Desert during the

Middle Pleistocene.

(M.A. Geyh and K. Heine)

O29: Interpreting speleothem δ13C palaeoclimate

records in southern Africa: calibrating autotrophic vs.

heterotrophic soil processes against a tree-ring

climate record.

(S. Woodborne, G. Hall, I. Robertson, A. Patrut)

O30: Leaf wax lipids as palaeoenvironmental proxies

in southern Africa: analysis of modern analogues.

(A.S. Carr, A. Boom, H. Grimes, B.M Chase, M.E.

Meadows, and M. Britton)

Conference Closure

12h30 - 13h30 LUNCH

13h30 - 15h00 SASQUA General Meeting

19h00 Conference Dinner

SASQUA 2012 - ORAL PRESENTATIONS


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ABSTRACTS

Oral Presentations



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O1: Dune generations and interdigitated aeolian and water-lain interdune deposits in the northern Namib Sand Sea. A. E. C Stone School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University, United Kingdom This presentation addresses chronologies for dune deposits and interdigitated aeolian and water-lain interdune deposits in the northern Namib Sand Sea, for which chronological control is either very scarce (in the case of dunes) or has been considered to be problematic (in the case of radiocarbon dates from open-system carbonate-rich water-lain deposits). The Namib Sand Sea contains a range of dune types and is believed to be one of the earth’s oldest deserts; however there is a paucity of chronological control for the dunes themselves. Recent application of ground penetrating radar and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating to complex linear dunes in the far north reveal the oldest units are 5700 years old, suggesting complete turnover of these large features in the Holocene (e.g. Bristow et al., 2007). By contrast ages older ages have been obtained from complex linear dunes at the southern end of the dunefield (accumulation 22.5-18 ka and 10-8.5 ka, Bubenzer et al., 2007) and from aeolian units interbedded with water-lain material in the side of a large complex linear dune at Narabeb in the north (between 132 and 68 ka, Stone et al., 2010). Other aeolian units in the Tsondab Flats have been dated to 17-10 ka. The sand sea also contains a number of sites with water-lain sediments, exposed in interdune regions, associated with the former courses of rivers such as the Tsondab River. The deposits indicate that there was increased moisture availability in this presently hyper arid region and/or the catchments of rivers to the east of the Sand Sea (in the Great Escarpment). The chronological control for deposition of those fluvial sediments was based on radiocarbon ages of carbonate materials (e.g. Teller et al., 1990) and the validity of these ages is problematic, not least as many of the published ages were close to the upper age limit of the technique in the 1980s. Interdigitated sand units have now been dated using luminescence dating, suggesting a revision of the chronology for the This presentation recaps the luminescence ages from the interdigitated sand units at three sites along the former course of the Tsondab River from Stone et al. (2010) and considers unpublished preliminary OSL ages from a region of dendritic dunes at 24

o04’ 44’’S, 15

o45’ 51’’ E. The former

suggests an extensive complex (36 m) of water-lain units at Narabeb fall within marine oxygen isotope stage 5 (MIS< 128-75 ka) and younger ages at sites closer to the current end-point of the Tsondab River. The preliminary dune OSL data suggests there are two generations of dune deposition in an area where the sand sea intersects with the Tsondab Flats. The flank of large dune (which appears as a gently rising grass-covered sand mantle, rising from 850 m at the dry river valley to > 900 m a.s.l.) sampled to a depth of 9 m, is giving preliminary ages in the range of ~ 40 ka (although there is a large amount of scatter in the OSL De estimates that needs further investigation), whilst the superimposed low relief un-vegetated secondary dune (2- 5 m high) is very recent. These two records are considered in the context of other key regional records to try to identify potential regional relationships and forcing factors. It is recognised that the production of regional reviews of palaeoenvironmental evidence with which to compare records from new sites tends to uncover to points of contention, which I look forward to discussing further. References:

Bristow. C. S., Duller, G. A. T., Lancaster, N. (2007). Age and dynamics of linear dunes in the Namib Desert. Geology, 35, 555-558.

Bubenzer, O., Bodeker, O., Besler, H. (2007). A transcontinental comparison between the southern Namib Erg (Namibia) and

the southern Great Sand Sea (Egypt). Zentralblatt für Geologie und Paläontologie Teil, 1, 7-23. Stone, A. E. C., Thomas, D. S. G., Viles, H. A., (2010). Late Quaternary palaeohydrological changes in the northern Namib

Sand Sea: New chronologies using OSL dating of interdigitated aeolian and water-lain interdune deposits. Palaeogeography,

Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 288, 35-53. Teller, J.T., Rutter, N., Lancaster, N., 1990. Sedimentology and paleohydrology of Late Quaternary lake deposits in the

northern Namib Sand Sea, Namibia. Quaternary Science Reviews 9, 343–364.



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02: The age, genesis and significance of the sterile dune sand at Blombos, South Africa. S. J. Armitage (1), J. Hassall (1). (1) Centre for Quaternary Research, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey, United Kingdom. The MSA sequence at Blombos, a prominent South African Still Bay site, is famously terminated by an archaeologically sterile dune sand dated to c.70 ka (Henshilwood et al., 2002). This sand may constitute either a site specific cause for abandonment, or be representative of a regional re-mobilisation of coastal sediment. The former scenario allows a deeper understanding of the nature of the Blombos record, whereas the latter scenario indicates substantial changes in the palaeogeography of the landscape occupied by Still Bay producing populations. Distinguishing between these scenarios is important since Jacobs et al. (2008) demonstrate an abrupt disappearance of the Still Bay industry at c.71 ka. Here, we present optically stimulated luminescence ages for both the dune sand from around Blombos, and apparently contemporaneous cemented dunes along the south coast. The implications of these ages for the environmental conditions surrounding the end of the Still Bay industry in the southern coast of South Africa will be discussed. References: References: Henshilwood, C.S., d’Errico, F., Yates, R., Jacobs, Z., Tribolo, C., Duller, G.A.T., Mercier, N., Sealy, J.V., Valladas, H., Watts,

I., and Wintle, A.G. (2002) Emergence of modern human behaviour: Middle Stone Age engravings from South Africa. Science 295, 1278-1280.

Jacobs, Z., Roberts, R.G., Galbraith, R.F., Deacon, H.J., Grün, R., Mackay, A., Mitchell, P., Vogelsang, R., and Wadley, L. (2008) Ages for the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa: Implications for human behaviour and dispersal. Science 322, 733-735.



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03: Post-depositional modification of Kalahari fluvial and aeolian sediments and the implications thereof for OSL dating of the main Kalahari dunes.

R. McG. Miller PO Box 11222, Windhoek, Namibia Kalahari sediments in the Owambo Basin of northern Namibia are at least 470 m thick and rest in places on the African Surfaces regolith consisting of deeply weathered and clayey Karoo and Damara sediments. Basal Kalahari sediments are red, clay rich and silty with well preserved horizontal bedding laminations and ripple cross-lamination in places indicative of a fluvial origin. Two conglomeratic horizons extend deep into the basin. The upper stratigraphic unit in the basin is the Andoni Formation consisting predominantly of white to very pale green clayey sands with lenses of green saline clay. In the Cubango Megafan, which is some 350 km long and wide and extends from its apex in the Angolan highlands to the top end of Etosha Pan, the Andoni Formation is some 240 m thick. A fine-grained, well sorted, brown to grey, fresh-water aquifer at its base is overlain by lenses of grey clay and bioturbated but unbedded clayey sands that serve as an aquitard. The more than 120 m of whitish clayey sands that overlie this lack bedding entirely and are totally unsorted with very coarse-grained to grit-size quartz grains forming a minor component that is totally randomly scattered through the sediment. These unsorted sediments do not show any signs of bioturbation. The topographical gradient of the megafan is as low as that of the Okavango delta, the lowest recorded in the literature. How do more than 100 m of fluvial sediment accumulate without any bedding and without sorting? Is post-depositional bioturbation the cause? Stacked Kalahari gravel layers each with its own capping of pedogenic calcrete in the Weissrand south of Mariental point to Kalahari deposition being highly intermittent. In places, 10s of thousands of years may have separated depositional pulses - adequate time for extensive bioturbation and possibly total destruction of sedimentary layering. Palaeolake Etosha was the end point of the Cubango and Kunene Megafans. Soon after deposition of a fossiliferous, 4-Ma sandstone layer at the top of the Palaeolake Etosha succession, flow into the palaeolake ceased and the palaeolake dried up completely. Aggradational accumulation of the Kalahari succession in the Owambo Basin ceased and may have ceased throughout most of the Kalahari. This was during the last glaciation and seems to have been the stage when the Kalahari dune system formed. Ice cores show expansion of deserts during glaciations. A change back to a wetter climate, possibly at about 1 Ma when the 41 ka solar cycles changed to 100 ka cycles, saw a resumption of flow into the Etosha depression. This must also have been the stage at which the rivers in the Kalahari of eastern Namibia began to develop, the Omatako, Eiseb, Epukiro, Nossob, Olifants and Auob Rivers, amongst others. These rivers cut the Kalahari dunes. Dune sand has not been banked up in wind shadows in the valleys of these rivers. Acheulian hand axes occur on terraces well down in the 45-m deep Auob River valley. The generally accepted age for such hand axes is 500 ka, although they can be older and as young as 200 ka. Why are OSL dates of the Kalahari dunes so much younger than the above geological evolution suggests? The answer must lie in bioturbation. Early mineral exploration relied on this entirely for its success in “seeing through” more that 50 m of Kalahari cover.



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04: The palaeosols at Vaalputs, Bushmanland plateau, Northern Cape, South Africa: stratigraphy and field evidence for complex structures. A. Logue (1, 2), M.A.G. Andreoli (1, 3), C. Clarke (4), O Majodina (4), F. Netterberg(5) I. Stengel (6) (1) NWD, Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa, P.O.Box 582, Pretoria, 0001, South Africa (2) Department of Geological Science, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa (3) School of Geosciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa (4) Department of Earth Sciences, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa (5) 79 Charles Jackson Street, Weavind Park 0184, Pretoria, South Africa (6) NamibGeoVista, P.O. Box 80849, Olympia, Windhoek, Namibia The disposal of low and intermediate level radioactive waste in 8 m deep trenches at Vaalputs, ~100 km SE of Springbok enables the study of soil forming processes on the Bushmanland plateau. The Vaalputs stratigraphy consists of Holocene red residual sand (~0.5-1 m) and hardpans (dorbank) (0.5-1m) spread on ~20 m thick, probably Cenozoic beds of the proposed Koa Plateau Group. The latter consist of greywackes (Mid-Tertiary? Upper Vaalputs Formation), siltstone (Early Tertiary-Late Cretaceous?, Lower Vaalputs Form.) and kaolinitized sandstone (Cretaceous, Dasdap Form.). The basement is constituted by granitoids of the Mesoproterozoic Namaqua Belt. The hardpan and greywackes host soil features and structures currently under investigation. Among the most puzzling are finely laminated Ba-enriched veins that wrap around dorbank peds and indicate a wetter, Pleistocene climate. Other penetrative features observed include a) conical depressions filled by unconsolidated to (semi) consolidated pebbly/gritty sand reminiscent of makondo (karst structures) and b) “(un)consolidated sand tongues” that extend to depths of >6m with features typical of krotovinas (in-filled animal barrows) and termitaria. Of structural interest is the ubiquitous developments of palygorskite-decorated (cm-scale) cracks in weathered, oxidized greywackes to depth <4 m that may be accounted for by their shrinkage properties. However, no satisfactory explanation exists for the often-observed wedge/lenticular, structures that affect the greywackes to depths <5m (Fig. 1). Such structures, compressive in character, are defined by polished and slickensided shear fractures younger than the hardpan palaeosol but older than the undisturbed red sand cover.

Figure 1: Polished, slickensided shear fractures in a trench.



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05: Diagenetic evolution of the Boteti delta, Makgadikadi pans,north-west Botswana S. Ringrose (1), L. Cassidy (2), W. Matheson (1), S. Coetzee (3), S. Diskin (4) and A. Mackay (5) (1) Sunart Enterprises, Maun, Botswana (2) Okavango Research Institute, University of Botswana, Maun, Botswana (3) Department of Physics, University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana (4) Department of Geology, University of Glamorgan, U.K. (5) Department of Geography, University College London, UK. The Boteti is an endoreic river which flows into Ntwetwe pan, within the Makgadikgadi salt pan complex. Work was undertaken on sediments deposited at the mouth of the river to determine the nature of change taking place following the last Holocene palaeo-lake relatively shallow highstand ca. 8 800 years ago (Ringrose et al., 2009). The delta comprises ca. 2.0 m pale yellow clayey silt with white diatomaceous earths and burned peat at the surface. The underlying bedrock comprises mainly Karoo sandstones. Delta sediment mineralogy (XRD) comprises quartz, amorphous silica, calcite, halite, halloysite and smectite at the distal (pan) margin while feldspars and muscovite were also evident at the proximal margin. SEM results indicate that most of the yellow clayey silt of the delta is composed of modified diatomaceous earths with biogenic calcite plates and smectitic clays. The diatom flora were identified as being predominantly freshwater suggesting that the micro-algae and associated invertebrates were either washed into the delta during the last major Boteti inflow or that freshwater lagoonal conditions prevailed at the pan edge throughout much of the Holocene. The lagoonal option is supported by the low concentration of clastic sediments, lack of bedding and the high plant content of the sediments. The lagoonal pore water chemistry, consistent with the micro-environment and inflow regime is assumed to have been similar to that occurring in the Okavango delta at present. Diagenetic evidence of early desiccation is shown initially by lagoonal drying leading to pore waters in the sediment became progressively enriched in Ca++ ions as the biogenic calcite plates dissolved leading to an increase in pH to saturation. Further drying led to the re-precipitation of CaCO3 as calcite crystals preferentially on the biogenic plates. As desiccation proceeded further, saline conditions (halite formation) took place leading to diatom distintegration and amorphous silica precipitation (cf Loucaides, 2010) as the hydrated Si atoms were released as silicic acid (H2SiO4). Interactions between Al dissolved in porewater and bSiO2 may have induced smectite formation. Al supplied by weathered feldspars contributed to the formation of authigenic alumino-silicate minerals in the form of clay aggregates observed in the lower silty-clays. Near complete lagoonal drying in the late Holocene was accompanied by extensive burning leading to the deposition of organic rich silt beds on the delta and adjacent pan surfaces. Four developmental stages are recognised in the Boteti delta sediments tentatively dated here in parallel with palaeo-Okavango delta flow regimes (Nash et al, 2006) (1) initial fresh-water lagoon ca 8 8 ka, (2) early desiccation-alkalinisation and later salinisation ca.7-4 ka, (3) recent Boteti river incision 2-1 ka followed by complete desiccation and burning of near channel macrophytes. References: Loucaides, S, 2010, Dissolution of biogenic silica: roles of pH,salinity, pressure, electrical charging and reverse weathering, Doctoral thesis, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, 123 pp. Nash, D.J., Meadows, M.E., Gulliver, V.L., 2006, Holocene environmental change in the Okavango Panhandle, northwest Botswana, Quaternary Science Reviews, 25: 1302-1322. Ringrose, S., Harris, C., Huntsman-Mapila, P., Vink, B.W., Diskins, S., Vanderpost, C. and W. Matheson, W. 2009. Origins of strandline duricrusts around the Makgadikgadi Pans (Botswana Kalahari) as deduced from their chemical and isotope composition. Sedimentary Geology. 219, 1-4 :262-279.



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O6: The age, geomorphic, palaeoenvironmental and anthropological significance of silcretes on the South African coastal plain. D. L. Roberts (1), S. Niederman (2) and C. Musekiwa (1) (1) Council for Geoscience, Bellville, South Africa (2) GeoForschungsZentrum, Potsdam, Germany Pedogenic silcrete is confined to the coastal plane and formed on deaply weathered (typically argillaceous) substrates in moist, low relief settings mainly along river courses, poorly drained tablelands or flanking highlands-under a climate that was warm and with relatively high (but seasonal) precipitation. Thus their present geomorphic expression, mainly as cappings to erosional residuals, represents a topographic inversion of ancient land surfaces. Strong geomorphic evidence exists for a range of silcrete ages. The Platbakkies silcrete on the west coast is the only one above the Great Escarpment and is potentially Mesozoic in age. The examples at high elevations (up to 100 m+) above the present drainages with which they were associated, are probably Palaeogene to Neogene in age. Even these older examples, however, display evidence of more than one period of genesis, as evidenced by staircases of silcretised river terraces. Some silcretes flank existing drainages which have barely incised their channels since silicification occurred (in some instances only a few metres above sea level) and are much younger (Quaternary?). In general, however, silcrete chronology is poorly constrained, giving rise to divergent models of landscape evolution. Here we report on cosmogenic 21Neon (21Ne) surface dating of a range of silcretes along the coastal plane. Whereas the maximum range of 26Al/ 10Be surface dating is ~5Ma because of isotope instability, the stable 21Ne isotope has no such constraints. Geomorphic evidence suggests that erosion rates for silcretes is extremely low, due their highly indurated homogenous character, thereby offering the possibility that 21Ne that will be able to distinguish between older and younger silcretes and provide very old minimum ages for erosional surfaces in general.



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O7: Late Pliocene woody vegetation from the Upper Burgi member, near Ileret, Koobi Fora, East Turkana Basin, Kenya. M .K. Bamford. Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, School of Geosciences, University of the Witwatersrand, P. Bag 3, WITS 2050, Johannesburg, South Africa. [email protected] The eastern side of Lake Turkana (previously Lake Rudolf) in northern Kenya has been well known for a number of early hominin finds since the 1970’s with the recovery of Australopithecus boisei, Homo erectus or Homo ergaster, and Homo habilis. In 1969 stone artifacts were discovered at Koobi Fora by a geologist, Kay Behrensmeyer. Richard and Mary Leakey were notified and excavations were begun. Several teams still work in the area and in 2005 the first fossil wood samples were collected. Silicified woods from the archaeological site of FwJj20, Area 41, Il Dura region of Koobi Fora, northern Kenya, are described. They are from the upper Burgi Member of the Koobi Fora Formation and dated at 1.95 Ma on the basis of geochemical and palaeomagnetic dates of the tuffs. Woods have been identified as Funtumia sp. (Apocynaceae); Leguminoxylon sp. and Schotia sp. (Caesalpiniaceae); Diospyros sp. (Ebenaceae); Drypetes sp. (Euphorbiaceae); Khaya sp. (Meliaceae); Acacia sp. (Mimosaceae); and Ziziphus sp. (Rhamnaceae). Palaeoenvironmental implications from the woods support the evidence from the fauna and sedimentology of a riverine, wooded and humid setting where there is the earliest evidence for hominins who produced and used stone tools for the butchery of animal carcasses. Groundwater forest and open woodlands were in the near vicinity. References: Bamford, M.K., 2011. Late Pliocene woody vegetation of Area 41, Koobi Fora, East Turkana Basin, Kenya. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 164, 191-210.

Brown, F.H., Feibel, C.S., 1997. Stratigraphy, depositional environments and paleogeography of the Koobi Fora Formation. In:

J.M.Harris (ed.), Koobi Fora Research Project, Vol. 3; Clarendon Press, Oxford, pp. 1-30. Gasson, P., Trafford, T.C., Matthews., B., 2003. Wood anatomy of Caesalpinoideae. In: B.B. Klitgaard and A. Bruneau, (Eds), Advances in Legume Systematics, part 10, Higher Level Systematics. Pp. 63-93. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

IAWA Committee, 1989. IAWA list of microscopic features for hardwood identification. IAWA Bulletin, n.s. 10, 219-332 InsideWood – web database of wood anatomy based at North Carolina State University but with links to other xylaria: http://insidewood.lib.ncsu.edu/search

mailto:[email protected]

http://insidewood.lib.ncsu.edu/search



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O8: From the Cape to the Okavango Delta: an assessment of C3 and C4 grass phytoliths along modern climatic gradients for paleoclimatic interpretation. C. Cordova Department of Geography, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater OK, U.S.A. The main objective of this paper is to discuss the potential of grass phytoliths for paleoclimatic reconstruction in tropical and temperate Southern Africa. The research was carried out on 142 soil surface samples along transects spanning latitudes 34° 49’ and 18° 25’ S, across several biomes (Fynbos, Succulent Karoo, Nama Karoo, Subtropical Thicket, Grassland, Desert and Savanna) and the Okavango Delta ecosystem. The foundation of this study is a regionally-based classification of grass silica short-cell (GSSC) morphotypes, whose frequencies are correlated with seasonal precipitation, mean annual precipitation, and temperatures of the growing season). The general findings of this study are: 1. Despite a positive correlation between C3 grasses and rainfall in the cooler part of the year (October-April), correlation coefficients are low (generally around 0.4 and 0.6). In part, this is because C3 grasses are substantially present at high elevations in the summer rainfall zone, and because Chloridoideae (a C4 grass subfamily) have a strong representation in the winter rainfall zone. 2. Problems with GSSC-morphotype multiplicity and redundancy, inherent to some Southern African grasses, still pose problems for dividing grass subfamilies (Rossouw 2009; Cordova and Scott 2010; Cordova 2012). Therefore, a taxonomic and spatial quantitative analysis and morphometric parameters should be implemented. 3. The use of Climatic and Aridity Indices developed in North America (by Twiss 1969) are difficult to apply directly to Southern Africa because of the misrepresentation of some locally abundant taxa (i.e., Ehrhartoideae, Danthonioideae and Stipagrostis) and the conditions of diversity and distribution of the main C3 and C4 grass subfamilies. References: Cordova, C.E. 2012. C3 and Restionaceae phytoliths as potential proxies for winter rainfall in South Africa. Quaternary International. In press.

Cordova, C.E. and Scott, L. 2010. The potential of Poaceae, Cyperaceae, and Restionaceae phytoliths to reflect past environmental conditions in South Africa. Palaeoecology of Africa 30, 107-133. Volume edited by Jürgen Runge.

Rossouw, L., 2009, The application of fossil grass-phytolith analysis in the reconstruction of Cainozoic environments in the South African interior, PhD Dissertation, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein.

Twiss, P.C., Suess, E., and Smith, R.M., 1969. Morphological classification of grass phytoliths. Soil Science Society of Amer ica Proceedings 33,109-115.



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O9: A Holocene desert margin pollen record from dung deposits at Nauwkluft, Namibia. L. Scott(1), G. Gil-Romera(2), G.A. Brook(3), and E. Marais(4)

(1) Department of Plant Sciences, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein South Africa (2) Pyrenean Institute of Ecology, CSIC, Avda. Montañana, 1005, 50059 Zaragoza, Spain (3) Department of Geography, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA (4) National Museum of Namibia, P.O. Box 1203, Windhoek, Namibia

A unique nine thousand year old pollen sequence is derived from two radiocarbon dated hyrax dung heaps in a small shelter on the farm Blasskranz, Namibia. The pollen contents contributes to the poorly understood Holocene vegetation and environmental history on the Namib Desert margin in which fluctuations of moisture from both the summer and winter rainfall sources should be considered The two heaps were dated by 11 radiocarbon dates. Interpreting the pollen sequence with its strong fluctuations is a challenge in which the relative inputs from the nearby stream vegetation and long distance sources should be weighed up. These considerations together with ongoing research on local pollen production and isotope composition promise to benefit this study. The main pollen division in the sequence is between an older period (9-5.5 ka) and younger one (5.5-0.5 ka) where the latter shows a relatively more consistent tree pollen input possibly reflecting a stronger savanna biome or summer-rain influence. The bottom-most section of the sequence (9-8 ka) consists of a grassy pollen assemblage apparently reflecting relatively good moisture availability. It is replaced by elements indicating drier desert conditions and disturbance (Tribulus, Chenopodiaceae and various Acanthaceae including Blepharis) ca. 8-6.5 ka. This is followed by a grass-rich pollen phase between ca. 6.5-5 ka during which Mimosoideae pollen peaked. Between 5 and 4 ka the tree component is replaced by mainly Combretaceae pollen while grass pollen was less prominent. From 4 ka until 0.5 ka an intermediately strong grass presence together with savanna elements suggests relatively stable rainfall conditions. This phase shows a gradual rise of Capparidaceae occurring simultaneous with a slight decline in Combretaceae pollen until 2 ka after which both families decline slowly until 0.5 ka. This pollen sequence considered together with others in the region can potentially contribute to a better understanding of the palaeoclimate in Namibia.



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O10: A new record of past environmental change from the Mfabeni Peatland, South Africa: stratigraphy, chronology and sediment characterisation. J. Finch (1), S. Pillay (1), M. Humphries (2), T. Hill (1), and C. Benitez-Nelson (3) (1) School of Agricultural, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (2) School of Chemistry, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa (3) Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences & Marine Science Program, University of South Carolina, USA This research revisits one of southern Africa’s potentially most important palaeoenvironmental archives, the Mfabeni Peatland (28°8'S, 32°31'E; 11 m a.s.l.) in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. As Africa’s largest active peatland, Mfabeni contains at least ten metres of peat sediment representing more than 40000 years of accumulation. Mfabeni presents a unique opportunity for global change research, deserving of fine-resolution analysis and the development of a robust chronology. Finch and Hill (2008) found excellent pollen preservation at the site, and a stratigraphically consistent radiocarbon-derived age-depth model for the bulk of the core, with the exception of possible reworking at the base. The current research has extracted a series of continuous sedimentary records via the vibracoring technique which extend to a depth of 9 m. Emphasis is placed on the development of a robust chronology, which combines radiocarbon, optically-stimulated luminescence, lead and caesium dating techniques. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, the study will apply multi-proxy analyses at a high sampling resolution, including pollen, charcoal and geochemistry. Here we present preliminary results including stratigraphy, chronology, grain size and geochemistry. Given the rarity of well-dated sediments which extend past the last glacial maximum in southern Africa, such detailed analysis of the Mfabeni Peatland could place this record as one of the most critical sites in the subregion. References:

Finch, J. & Hill, T. (2008) A late Quaternary pollen sequence from Mfabeni Peatland, South Africa: Reconstructing forest history in Maputaland. Quaternary Research, 70, 442-450. Optional Figure : Vibracoring at Mfabeni Peatland.



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O11: Multi-proxy evidence of late Quaternary palaeoenvironmental change, Cathedral Peak region, KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg, South Africa. J. Lodder (1), J. Finch (2), and T. Hill (1) (1) School of Agricultural, Earth and Environmental Science, Discipline of Geography, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa (2) School of Agricultural, Earth and Environmental Science, Discipline of Geography, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, South Africa In contrast to the wealth of palaeoenvironmental research stemming from the eastern Afromontane archipelago, the southern Afromontane component, which comprises largely of the Drakensberg, remains understudied. Suitable sites for palaeoenvironmental research are rare in South Africa due to general arid climatic conditions over much of the country. The Drakensberg constitute an area of significant biodiversity, cultural and economic importance and the KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg offers a unique opportunity for palaeoenvironmental research through its increased rainfall and higher altitudes, which enable the development of wetlands that have the potential for polliniferous accumulation to occur. Catchment Six in Cathedral Peak is one such wetland that has provided an opportunity to research palaeoenvironmental conditions of the southern Afromontane archipelago component. A 371 cm sediment core was extracted from a subalpine wetland in Catchment Six and analysed using multiple proxies including; pollen, charcoal and geochemistry (carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes). A chronological framework for the core was established based on accelerated mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating of eight bulk sediment samples. A basal date of 14,946 ± 320 cal yr BP was determined at a depth of 298 cm. Poor pollen preservation of the basal portion of the core limited palaeoenvironmental inference for the late Pleistocene section of the record. The multi-proxy record provides high chronological resolution for the early to late Holocene indicating variable climatic conditions. Charcoal data indicate periods of increased regional fires in the last ca. 400 cal yr BP. Palaeoenvironmental inferences from the Catchment Six record are broadly in agreement with regional climatic indications based on existing literature.



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O12: Monocots in the Middle Stone Age at Sibudu Cave, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. C. Sievers School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa Various sedges and grasses occur in the Middle Stone Age deposits at Sibudu Cave. Diverse and complimentary sources of evidence indicate these monocots were brought into the shelter for “bedding”, a surface for activities such as sleeping or working. Three of the identified sedges, Scleria poiformis, S. melanomphala and Cladium mariscus are no longer present in the Sibudu area. The implications of these changes in vegetation are explored, with reference also to other archaeobotanical remains, including plant impressions on small pieces of clay recovered from the Sibudu deposits.



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O13: Late Quaternary palaeoenvironments of the southern Cape, South Africa: palynological evidence from three coastal wetlands. L.J. Quick (1), M.E. Meadows (1), B.M. Chase (2,3), A.S. Carr (4), M.D. Bateman (5), J. Baade (6) and R. Mäusbacher (6) (1) Department of Environmental and Geographical Science, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa (2) Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier, Montpellier, France (3) Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen, Norway (4) Department of Geography, University of Leicester, United Kingdom (5) Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom (6) Physical Geography, Institut of Geography, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, 07737 Jena, Germany Despite recent advances in palaeoenvironmental research in southern Africa, the late Quaternary palaeoenvironmental history of the region remains incomplete. The southern Cape is a key focus area within this region as it falls within the Fynbos Biome, a global biodiversity hotspot, encompassing a mosaic of afromontane forest, thicket and various fynbos communities and is therefore of great botanical importance. As this area includes the transition from southern Africa’s winter rainfall zone to the year-round rainfall zone, it is also important from a palaeoclimatic perspective. Palynological records have been generated from three sediment cores from wetlands along the southern Cape coast. The records from vleis at Pearly Beach and Rietvlei, near Still Bay, provide information from much of the last ~25 and ~33 cal kyr BP respectively. Assessed in conjunction with plant biomarker, sedimentological, geochemical and charcoal data, these pollen sequences indicate distinct changes in late Pleistocene and Holocene palaeoenvironments. Further to the east is Vankervelsvlei, a small ombrotrophic depression near the town of Knysna. It is an example of a schwingmoor or floating bog, a geomorphological feature that is rarely found in the southern hemisphere (Irving and Meadows, 1997). The site is situated in the year-round rainfall zone and is located at the ecotone between the Fynbos and Afromontane Forest biomes (Mucina and Rutherford, 2006). An organic-rich sediment core has yielded a near-basal OSL age of c.120 ka. Despite the temporally discontinuous nature of this sequence, the pollen record exhibits marked changes in forest and fynbos taxa, with changes especially evident during the Last Interglacial. This study provides important insights into the palaeoecology of lowland fynbos and reveals a uniquely extensive palynological record for the Knysna afromontane region. References:

Irving, S.J.E., Meadows, M.E., 1997. Radiocarbon chronology and organic matter accumulation at Vankervelsvlei, near Knysna, South Africa. South African Geographical Journal 79, 101-105.

Mucina, L., Rutherford, M.C., 2006. The vegetation of South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland, Strelitzia. South African National Biodiversity Institute, Pretoria.



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O14: Pollen-based vegetation dynamics for the past 16 kyr from a rock hyrax midden located in the Cederberg Mountains –Western Cape (De Rif). V. Valsecchi (1), L. Truc (1), L. Quick (2), M. E. Meadows (2), and B.M. Chase (1,3) (1) Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution de Montpellier, UMR 5554, Centre National de Récherche Scientifique/Université Montpellier 2, France; (2) Department of Environmental and Geographical Science, University of Cape Town, South Africa; (3) Department of Archaeology, History, Culture and Religion, University of Bergen, Norway Previous studies based on pollen analysis on wetlands sediments (Meadows and Sugden 1991, 1993) and rock hyrax middens in the Cederberg Mountains (Meadows et al. 2010, Quick et al. 2011) show little vegetation changes during the last glacial-interglacial transition (LGIT). This has led to the conclusion mountain fynbos vegetation in Southwestern Cape is relatively resilient to climate changes (Meadows and Sugden 1993, Quick et al. 2011). Here we present high-resolution pollen and microcharcoal sequences for the past 16 kyr from a new section of the De Rif hyrax midden DR2 (Cederberg Mountains, southwestern Cape, South Africa). Our new sequence shows that at ca. 16 cal ka the dominant pollen types are Restionaceae, Ericaceae and Stoebe-type suggesting that the landscape was dominated by and Restioid/Ericaceous fynbos. A short-lived, but marked development of Proteoid fynbos, followed by a sharp increase in Dodonaea pollen percentages at 11.2 cal kBP indicate significant changes in vegetation and climate at the end of the LGIT. Following warm, wet conditions during the early Holocene, an increase in Asteraceae gen indet. and Aizoaceae pollen percentages indicate an increase of karooid/succulent shrubland elements. Our pollen assemblage indicates the presence of a mountain fynbos vegetation during the past 16 ka as established by previous studies. This continuous, higher resolution study however, highlights fluctuations in the pollen percentages that indicate significant responses to climate change and perhaps fire in driving vegetation dynamics at the site. References: Meadows, M. E., B. M. Chase, and M. Seliane. 2010. Holocene palaeoenvironments of the Cederberg and Swartruggens

mountains, Western Cape, South Africa: Pollen and stable isotope evidence from hyrax dung middens. Journal of Arid Environments 74:786-793. Meadows, M. E. and J. M. Sugden. 1991. A vegetation history of the last 14,000 years on the Cederberg, south-western Cape

Province. South African Journal of Science 87:34-43. Meadows, M. E. and J. M. Sugden. 1993. The late quaternary paleoecology of a floristic kingdom - the southwestern Cape South Africa. Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology 101:271-281.

Quick, L. J., B. M. Chase, M. E. Meadows, L. Scott, and P. J. Reimer. 2011. A 19.5 kyr vegetation history from the central Cederberg Mountains, South Africa: Palynological evidence from rock hyrax middens. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 309:253-270.



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O15: Climate proxies and occupation trends in the post-Pleistocene archaeological record for the Namib Desert. J. Kinahan Namib Desert Archaeological Survey, P.O. Box 22407, Windhoek, Namibia The regional post-Pleistocene radiocarbon record for the Namib Desert reflects human responses to global climatic shifts, indicating that evidence of human occupation in a hyper-arid environment is a sensitive proxy for these events. The archaeological record indicates that the human population of the Namib declined significantly during the LGM and that widespread re-occupation only resumed with the mid-Holocene Optimum. Differences between the northern and southern Namib record may be due to local effects of summer and winter rainfall regimes, and these require careful interpretation of the archaeological evidence. On the whole, it appears that human occupation of the Namib during the Holocene was accompanied by a series of important changes in subsistence strategy involving highly specialized hunting and gathering techniques and the eventual adoption of domestic livestock production. The combined effect of these innovations was a measure of food security which may explain circumstantial evidence of population growth during the last one thousand years. References:

Kinahan, J. and Kinahan J.H.A. 2009. The Namib Desert Archaeological Survey http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/kinahan325/

Mid-Holocene to Recent radiocarbon data from sites north (red) and south (blue) of 23 S.L.

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http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/kinahan325/



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O16: Sibudu charcoal: campfires and how they were used. S.J. Lennox and M.K Bamford School of Geosciences, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa The choice of wood to make fires in hearths found at Sibudu rock shelter on the uThongathi River, inland from the north coast of KwaZulu-Natal, may reveal an aspect of the cultural modernity of the people who lived there during the Middle Stone Age. If people were selectively collecting woods for certain purposes then woods may differ between hearths: different types of fires for a variety of activities might have been made in different parts of the shelter and there may have been possible medicinal use of plants. Burned bone and ashed plant remains recently reported from Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape provide the earliest known evidence for burning in an archaeological context, during the Acheulean occupation, approximately a million years ago. Preliminary identification results of charcoals collected from excavated hearths of selected layers at Sibudu are presented in this study. Anatomical features are recorded from the” doily-like” patterns of wood cells, visible in fractured planes of the charcoal. Trees and shrubs are identified when patterns are compared with those recorded in modern wood databases, such as “Inside Woods” by IAWA (International Association of Wood Anatomists). Charcoal in hearths and natural wood accumulated in dated peat deposits nearby, in addition to human choice, may link wood selection to changes in vegetation through time during the Middle Stone Age. References: Wadley, L., Sievers, C., Bamford, M., Goldberg, P., Berna, F. & Miller, C. 2011. Middle Stone Age Bedding Construction and Settlement Patters at Sibudu, South Africa. Science 334 (6061): 1388-1391

Berna, F., Goldberg, P., Horwitz, L.K., Brink, J., Holt, S., Bamford, M.K., and Chazan, M. 2012. Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa

www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1117620109

Figure: Spirostachys africana (Tambotie) charcoal, a transverse section magnified 115x.

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1117620109



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O17: Changes in vegetation and stone artefact technology across the MIS 4/3 transition at Klein Kliphuis rock shelter, Western Cape. A. Mackay (1) and C. Cartwright (2) (1) School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Australia (2) Department of Conservation and Scientific Research, British Museum, United Kingdom The transition from Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 4 to 3 is an important time in the archaeology of southern Africa, with major changes occurring in technological and occupational systems. However, the response of local and regional southern African environments to global-scale temperature changes at this time is not well known, and in consequence, the nature and strength of the relationship between archaeological and environmental changes is poorly understood. In this paper we present the results of an analysis of charcoals from the rock shelter site of Klein Kliphuis, located near the Olifants River in the Western Cape. The site has a well-resolved and well-dated archaeological sequence covering the transition from MIS 4 to 3. Our analyses suggest that technological changes at this site occurred in the context of a progressive loss of tree species and their replacement in the charcoal record by shrubs and woody grasses. The implications of these changes for the configuration of local environments, and for the relationship between environments and technology are considered.



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O18: A hazy shade of winter: the influence of climatic changes in Middle Stone Age foraging behaviour in South Africa. Geeske Langejans (1, 2) and Gerrit Dusseldorp (3) (1) Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, PO box 9515, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands (2) University of Johannesburg, Centre for Anthropological Research, South Africa (3) Institute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, PO box WITS 2050, South Africa It is often assumed that climatic and environmental developments caused major behavioural changes during the Late Pleistocene in Africa; specifically so at the beginning of Marine Isotope Stage 4 and the appearance of the Still Bay Industry. However, little is known about the local environmental settings of Middle Stone Age sites and recent research shows that global climatic trends, recorded in ice and deep sea cores, cannot simply be juxtaposed on the local South African situation. In this paper we explore the influence of local climate change on human subsistence strategies during Marine Isotope Stages 5 and 4 at Blombos Cave (South Africa). We examined the changes in small shellfish and large mammal prey to determine respectively a) the local climatic situation and b) how the changing climate may have influenced subsistence strategies. In terms of climatic indicators, the shellfish spectra suggest that Blombos phases M3 (Marine Isotope Stage 5c) and M1 (onset of Marine Isotope Stage 4) fall within the present day species and Sea Surface Temperature range of the Agulhas Marine Province; Blombos is currently located in this warmer province. The M3 phase is somewhat cooler than the M1; the latter is associated with the Still Bay Industry. In terms of heterogeneity and evenness, the mammal assemblages suggest that no dramatic changes in hunting are reflected at the site. It appears that the impact of the beginning of Marine Isotope Stages 4 may not have been as dramatic as has been supposed. This would mean that the Still Bay industry was not an adaptation to a harsh and resource depleted environment.



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O19: Two Hundred Years of Rainfall Variability in Namibia. S. E. Nicholson (1) (1) Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA An historical data set, based on documentary information and precipitation measurements, permits an examination of the spatiotemporal variability of rainfall over two centuries. It consists of wetness indices, ranging from -3 to +3, for 90 regions of Africa. The record for Namibia shows several decades of abnormally dry conditions early in the nineteenth century and comparatively good conditions in the twentieth century. A principal component analysis shows the relationship between variability in Namibia and elsewhere over the southern subcontinent. The three most common spatial patterns explain 50% of the variability. These show markedly coherent throughout Namibia. In the most common mode the coherence extends throughout southern Africa. The two remaining modes show an opposition between Namibia and areas further east and further north. The latter opposition is seen in the contrast between Namibia and the dry Benguela coast. These patterns are equally common in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These appear to be inherent climate modes that most likely prevail on Quaternary time scales. Knowledge of these spatial patterns has implications for the interpretation of paleoclimate records over southern Africa. Reference: Nicholson, S. E., Klotter, D.A., Dezfuli, A. K. (2012) Spatial reconstruction of semi-quantitative precipitation fields over Africa

during the nineteenth century from documentary evidence and gauge data. Quaternary Research, in press.

Figure: Multi-region time series of "wetness" from 1801 to 1998 for Namibia and the Benguela coast.



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O20: Diatoms as indicators of climatic and limnological change in the Wilderness Embayment, southern Cape coast, South Africa. K. Kirsten (1), M.E. Meadows (1), J. Baade (2), S. Franz (2), B. Reinwarth (2), T. Haberzettl (2), R. Mäusbacher (2) (1) Department of Environmental & Geographical Science, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch (2) Physical Geography, Institut of Geography, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, 07737 Jena,

Germany The Wilderness region on the southern Cape coast of South Africa lies in the so-called all-year rainfall zone and is associated with a mosaic of natural vegetation communities, notably fynbos and afromontane forest. Bounded by the Outeniqua Mountains in the north and the Indian Ocean in the south, the embayment contains several coastal lakes lying in an east-west orientation. Two cores from Eilandvlei with basal ages of 610 (2σ range of 558 - 667) cal BP (66 cm) and 3900 (2σ range of 3826 - 3987) cal BP (151 cm) and one core from Swartvlei with a basal age of 1560 (2σ range of 1485 - 1628) cal BP (98 cm) were extracted from within the lakes and analysed for diatom fossils. A high sampling resolution generated 25, 72 and 38 samples for analysis, respectively. Preliminary results suggest a strong link between marine and freshwater influxes over the varying time scales, particularly at Swartvlei which has a more direct link to the sea. However, a marine transgression is recorded at Eilandvlei from the 155 to 102 cm, prior to the onset of estuarine conditions. Generally, marine influences decrease towards the present, with increasing alkalinity. Variability in the ratio between planktonic and benthic species over time suggests dynamic water level fluctuations, with occasional periods of lower water level stands than present. The increased proportion of eutrophic species towards the surface probably reflects changes in land use in the catchment of both lake systems tentatively correlated with European colonization and agricultural expansion. The Wilderness lakes show great potential as a geoarchive for late Holocene changes, and ongoing analysis is expected to reveal further insights into the relative influences of climate-, sea-level change and human activity in determining the characteristics of the lakes in question.



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O21: The application of pdf-based botanical-climatological transfer functions to southern Africa fossil pollen sequences: a quantitative reconstruction of palaeoclimatic variables over the last 20 kyr at

Wonderkrater, South Africa. Loïc Truc (1), Brian M. Chase (1, 2), Charly Favier (1), Rachid Cheddadi (1), Michael E. Meadows (3), Louis Scott (4), Manuel Chevalier (1) (1) Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution de Montpellier, UMR 5554, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique/Université Montpellier 2, Bat.22, CC061, Place Eugène Bataillon, 34095 Montpellier, cedex5, France; (2) Department of Archaeology, History, Culture and Religion, University of Bergen, Postbox 7805, 5020, Bergen, Norway (3) Department of Environmental and Geographical Science, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa (4) Department of Plant Sciences, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein 9300, South Africa In the southern tropics and subtropics of Africa, a commonly cited palaeoclimatic phenomenon is a southward migration of the mean annual position of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), driven by the fluctuations in: 1) high latitude Northern Hemisphere cooling and/or direct insolation forcing. Both of these hypotheses imply an inter-hemispheric anti-phase relationship, where aridification in northern tropics coincides with humidification. To date, however, no irrefutable evidence supporting these hypotheses has been found in Southern Hemisphere. One record that has played a particularly important role in shaping our understanding of past vegetation changes in southeast Africa during the late Quaternary is the fossil pollen record from the Wonderkrater spring mound, which appears to indicate a relative dry early Holocene, and supports the hypothesis of direct insolation forcing of the African monsoon. As other records have been obtained from the region, however, early interpretations of the Wonderkrater sequence appear to exhibit certain inconsistencies. Mozambique Channel SSTs, for instance, indicate warmer ocean surface temperatures, which might be expected to invigorate regional monsoon systems, as perhaps reflected in the increased forest and woodland cover indicated by the Cold Air Cave speleothem record and fossil pollen from marine core MD96-2048 off the Limpopo River mouth. Described in this paper is the use plant distribution and climatic data to explore the specific climatic requirements of the plant taxa comprising the primary pollen-types identified in the Wonderkrater sediment core, and the development of botanical-climatological transfer functions based on probability density functions (pdf’s). Our findings indicate that conditions at Wonderkrater are tightly linked to variations in SSTs, and that the early to mid-Holocene was the wettest period of the last 20 kyr, arguing against a dominant role of direct insolation forcing. As well as addressing a critical topic in southern African palaeoclimatology, this work also describes the methods by which quantitative, rather than qualitative, estimates of past climatic parameters from southern African fossil pollen records.



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O22: Late Quaternary environmental change in central southern Africa: a case for considering the role of variability. David S.G. Thomas (1) and Sallie L Burrough (1) (1) School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University, United Kingdom

Environmental and climatic variability at a range of temporal and spatial scales are significant traits of drylands in southern Africa and worldwide, impacting on ecosystem and geomorphic processes, and human behaviour. Environmental variability is also considered as a potential major influence on hominid behaviour and the evolution of homo sapiens by palaeoanthropologists such as Rick Potts (e.g. Potts 1998). It might therefore be hypothesised that environmental variability has been an important trait of Late Quaternary environments and climate in southern Africa, but one that has largely been ignored given the potential difficulty of identifying variability in proxy records and a propensity to focus on evidence for major environmental changes, especially involving more humid and more arid conditions than at present. We therefore pose, and attempt to answer, three questions relevant to both addressing this hypothesis and developing appropriate interpretations of some southern African palaeoenvironmental archives:

1. What is environmental variability in space and time and how is it represented in Late Quaternary research in Africa?

2. What presence may environmental variability possess in southern African palaeoenvironmental records, and how might this impact on the interpretation of temporal records of change (Thomas and Burrough 2012)?

3. What is its significance for unravelling the nature of late Quaternary climate and environmental changes in the region, and their potential impacts on early human behaviour?

References:

Potts R. (1998) Environmental Hypotheses of Hominin Evolution. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology. 41: 93-136.

Thomas, D.S.G. and Burrough S.L. (2012) Interpreting geo-proxies of late Quaternary climate change in African drylands:

implications for understanding environmental and early human behaviour. Quaternary International. 253: 5-17.



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O23: Sedimentary dynamics and depositional controls for the western seaboard of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa. M.R. MacHutchon (1), J.S. Compton (2) (1) Council for Geoscience, South Africa (2) Department of Geological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa The beaches along the western sea-board of the Cape Peninsula are significant tourist attractions, important to socio-economic development of the greater Cape Town metropole. Understanding sediment dynamics and erosion/accretion controls are central to improved management of these resources. Offshore, multiple high-resolution marine geophysical datasets were collected in Hout Bay to map submerged geological units in detail and infer how the Hout Bay area has responded to Quaternary sea-level fluctuations. These interpretations allow for the reconstruction of the geological evolution of the seafloor in the mapped area. Quaternary sea-level fluctuations have caused Hout Bay to become exposed aerially and completely drowned. This study has shown that the majority of the unconsolidated marine sediments in Hout Bay (65%) can be attributed to Pleistocene sediment deposition during sea-level lowstands. Additional sediment sources include reworked coastal Pleistocene deposits, sediment deposited during lowstands, coastal erosion from wave action, aeolian-derived coastal sediment, localised chemical weathering of lithological outcrops, biogenically-derived sediment from marine organisms and terrigenous input from local rivers. All of these facies are entrained by the northward flowing longshore drift. Hydrodynamics within the bay control sediment accumulation with finer grained sediment accumulating along Hout Bay beach. A small portion of this is winnowed off, entrained into the sediment headland bypass corridor. With increased pressure from the urbanisation, alien grass species have been introduced that have stabilised the dunes and starved the sediment corridor. The majority of unconsolidated sediment continues to migrate with the northward longshore drift vector around and out of the bay.



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O24: Floods, wind, time: site formation on the Uniab River coastal fan, Skeleton Coast National Park, Namibia Avery, G. (1,2), Fosse, P. (3) (1) Natural History Department, Iziko South African Museum, Cape Town, South Africa. [email protected] (2) Archaeology Department, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa (3. UMR 5608 CNRS, Université de Toulouse le Mirail, Toulouse, France A recent brown hyaena (Parahyaena brunnea) den 4.5 km from the coast has yielded an assemblage of prey remains that includes bovidae, cetaceae, pinnipedeae and aves. The den area was on a vegetated sand platform on the edge of a minor channel, which formed the western edge. Up to five individuals occupied the platform at any one time and 6 burrow entrances were observed. At the time of recording (1982) the area had been abandoned after flooding earlier in the year. Bones, latrines and 2 burrows were visible on track-like depressions between sedge (Scirpus dioicus) hummocks. Aeolian drift, encroaching on the eastern edge of the den area was covering bones. After plotting and removal of surface bones, excavation of an area underlying a sandy gulley revealed buried bones of an earlier occurrence. This remnant was deposited under fluvial conditions, pebbles and silt balls being evident; longer bones and horns were aligned longitudinally in a narrow portion and in a circular pattern, suggestive of swirling, at the downstream barrier. These had been washed into the gulley by a flood in 1966 (16 years earlier). The den area was then abandoned until 1980, when hyaenas again took up residence and accumulation of the bones recorded on the surface was initiated. Recorded flood periodicity averages 9 years, but not every flood level is high enough to inundate the Uniab platform. The 1982 flood inundated burrows on the platform and washed at least some bones onto the sandy surface of the sandy gulley noted above. The time taken for the upper accumulation to form was about 2 years; that of the lower accumulation is unknown. There is no way of determining what was lost during the floods, particularly in 1966. Our observation interrupted a natural process; over time in a dynamic system, repeated floods might hypothetically have eroded the channel bank and removed previously-accumulated bones altogether, or not. The Uniab occurrence hints at location requirements and rate at which brown hyaena bone accumulations can form and illustrates periodic use of the one suitable site in the vicinity; it records factors which result in rapid burial and preservation of bones and an insight into two mechanism(s) that could lead to conditions amenable to the preservation of very ancient “bone beds”.



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O25: Marine geophysics and geological modelling of offshore Late Quaternary palaeoshorelines in the southern Cape, South Africa. H. C. Cawthra (1, 2), C. W. Marean (3), E. C. Fisher (3) and J. S. Compton (2) (1) Marine Geoscience Unit, Council for Geoscience, Cape Town, South Africa (2) Department of Geological Science, University of Cape Town, South Africa (3) Institute of Human Origins, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, USA Archaeological results in the southern Cape, South Africa, suggest that early modern humans focused their occupation on the coastline and thus would have followed it out onto the now submerged continental shelf in response to retreating Quaternary sea-levels. A high-resolution model of these sea-level and coastline fluctuations shows that during most of this time the shoreline was positioned between several kilometres and up to 95 km away from the current coastal caves. In order to understand the nature of this environment and how it may have influenced early modern human occupation, offshore geological mapping on the broad continental shelf in the vicinity of Mossel Bay was undertaken to ultimately develop a high-resolution and continuous palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the region from MIS 11 through to MIS 3 (440 – 40 ka) by geological modelling. A 255 km

2 block of seafloor was surveyed using high resolution marine geophysics (multibeam

bathymetry, side-scan sonar and boomer and pinger sub-bottom profiling). In the area, preserved clastic shoreline facies of the lower- and upper shoreface, foreshore, storm beaches, transgressive boulder lags and dunes remain on the present shoreline and inner shelf, representing at least two composite regressive – transgressive sea-level cycles. Palaeodrainage and evolution of incised river channels has been traced from periods of sea-level lowstands. These remnant coastal features are used in the construction of palaeoenvironments at key time slices in the archaeological record and the semi-continuous rock outcrops extending offshore provide a unique opportunity to understand transitional glacial – interglacial depositional processes.



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O26: A marine record of hydroclimate from southwestern Africa over the past 145 ka J. A. Collins (1), S. Mulitza (1), A. Govin (1), E. Schefuß (1), G. Mollenhauer (2) and R. Tiedemann (2) (1) MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany (2) Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany The environmental history and climate dynamics of southwestern Africa are not yet fully understood. For example, decreased southern hemisphere insolation during the mid-Holocene, seems to cause drier conditions in southeastern Africa (Schefuß, et al., 2011) but, unexpectedly, seems to cause wetter conditions in southwestern Africa (Chase, et al., 2009). Here we further investigate the climate of southwestern Africa using terrestrial climate proxies taken from a marine sediment core located at 23°S off Namibia. Our sediment core covers the last 145 ka and thus allows us to investigate the response of climate to insolation changes over several orbital cycles. In addition, it allows us to investigate the response to glacial conditions relative to the Holocene (0-11.7ka) and Eemian (114-130ka) interglacial periods. We analyse organic and inorganic climate proxies including: (1) δ

13C of

leaf-wax n-alkanes - a proxy for vegetation type (Castañeda, et al., 2009); (2) δD of leaf-wax n-alkanes - a proxy for rainfall amount and/or moisture source (Schefuß, et al., 2011); (3) BIT index (Branched vs Isoprenoid Tetraether index) - an indicator for the contribution of soil versus marine organic matter (Hopmans, et al., 2004) and (4) Major-element composition of sediment - an indicator of the river versus dust contribution (Mulitza, et al., 2010). In our presentation, we will discuss new results from these analyses, with a particular focus on the Holocene and Eemian, and on abrupt changes during glacial-interglacial transitions. References: Castañeda, I. S. et al., (2009). Wet phases in the Sahara/Sahel region and human migration patterns in North Africa. Proc.

Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 106, 20159-20163. Chase, B.M., Meadows, M.E., Scott, L., Thomas, D.S.G., Marais, E., Sealy, J., Reimer, P.J., (2009). A record of rapid Holocene

climate change preserved in hyrax middens from southwestern Africa. Geology 37, 703-706.

Hopmans, E.C., Weijers, J.W.H., Schefuß, E., Herfort, L., Sinninghe Damsté, J.S., Schouten, S., (2004). A novel proxy for terrestrial organic matter in sediments based on branched and isoprenoid tetraether lipids. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 224, 107-116.

Mulitza, S., Heslop, D., Pittauerova, D., Fischer, H.W., Meyer, I., Stuut, J.-B., Zabel, M., Mollenhauer, G., Collins, J.A., Kuhnert, H., Schulz, M., (2010). Increase in African dust flux at the onset of commercial agriculture in the Sahel region. Nature 466, 226-228.

Schefuß, E., Kuhlmann, H., Mollenhauer, G., Prange, M., Patzold, J., (2011). Forcing of wet phases in southeast Africa over the past 17,000 years. Nature 480, 509-512.



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O30: Phytolith assemblages from dental calculus: potential for studying paleodiets of prehistoric, historic and recent megaherbivores. C. Cordova (1), G. Avery (2) (1) Department of Geography, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater OK, U.S.A. (2) Iziko South African Museum, Natural History Collections Department: Cenozoic Studies Section, Cape Town, South Africa. Opal phytoliths extracted from dental calculus (i.e., tartar) have shown potential applications in reconstructing diets and possible ranges of extinct mega-herbivore species (Armitage 1975; Gobbetz and Bozarth 2001; Cordova and Agenbroad 2007). This study presents data obtained from phytolith assemblages collected from dental calculus of mega-herbivore fauna from two West Coast sites: Elandsfontein (Late Acheulian) and Spreeuwalle (Middle Stone Age). The researched species are Equus capensis, Pelorovis antiquus, and Loxodonta africana. The study included comparisons with historical and modern Equus spp., Syncerus caffer and Loxodonta africana from localities in the Western and Eastern Cape. Phytoliths from the sediments associated with the faunal remains present assemblages similar to the modern samples, where the frequencies of restio and sedge phytoliths are high, and the grass phytoliths are low and dominated by C3 grasses. Of all the species studied, Loxodonta africana presented the highest diversity of phytoliths, which is a pattern reflected in their historical/modern counterparts. On the other hand, E. capensis had assemblages restricted predominantly to grasses, virtually no restios, and only a minimal component of dicots (<5% of all phytoliths). Pelorovis assemblages show a highly variable diet among the specimens, but the restio-sedge and dicot components are much larger than in Equus. The study of phytoliths from dental calculus presents some possibilities for studying paleodiets and paleoenvironmnents, including possible migrations and ecological stresses. The technique is also useful for dietary comparisons between fauna in reserves/parks and their free-roaming counterparts.

References:

Armitage, P.L. 1975 The extraction and identification of opal phytoliths from the teeth of ungulates. Journal of Archaeological Science 2 (3): 187-197.

Cordova, C.E., and Agenbroad, L., 2009, Opal phytoliths from teeth calculus in the mammoths of the Hot Springs Site, South Dakota, Current Research in the Pleistocene 26, 145-147.

Gobetz, K.E., and S. R. Bozarth 2001 Implications for Late Pleistocene mastodon diet from opal phytoliths in tooth calculus. Quaternary Research 55 (2): 115-122.



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O28: Evidence from U-series dates of speleothems for humid periods in the Namib Desert during the Middle Pleistocene. M.A. Geyh (1), and K. Heine (2) (1) Rübeland 12, 29308 Winsen (Aller), Germany (2) Phil. Fak. I, University of Regensburg, 93040 Regensburg, Germany A small cave with one large stalagmite and a thick flowstone layer at its foot is located near the Rössingberge in the hyper-arid Namib Desert, Namibia. Samples for TIMS-230Th/U dating were taken from three horizontal cores drilled into the stalagmite and from a vertical core drilled into the flowstone. The paleoclimatic interpretation of the results, for the first time, provides evidence for pluvial phases in deserts of southern Africa during the dominant hyper-arid Middle Pleistocene. The pluvial periods of the last 400 ka when cave calcite formed follow the 100-ka-Milankovitch cycle and coincide with wet periods in the hyper-arid Murzuq Basin, North Africa, the hyper-arid northern Oman, Arabian Peninsula, and the Negev Desert, Israel. References: Geyh, M.A. & Thiedig, F. (2008) The Middle Pleistocene Al Mahrúqah Formation in the Murzuq Basin, northern Sahara, Libya

evidence for orbitally-forced humid episodes during the last 500,000 years. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 257(1-2), 1-21.



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O29: Interpreting speleothem δ13C palaeoclimate records in southern Africa: calibrating autotrophic vs. heterotrophic soil processes against a tree-ring climate record. S. Woodborne (1), G. Hall (1), I. Robertson (2), A. Patrut (3) (1) Natural Resources and the Environment, CSIR, Box 395, 0001 Pretoria, South Africa (2) Department of Geography, Swansea University, UK (3) Babes-Bolyai University, Kogalniceanu 1, 400084 Cluj-Napoca, Romania Interpretations of speleothem δ

13C palaeoclimate records from southern Africa invoke the widely

accepted C3 vs. C4 vegetation structure of the landscape as the underlying proxy, but there is some ambiguity in assigning a climatic meaning to these changes. Structural responses of vegetation to rainfall take place over decadal time scales while sub-seasonal or event-scale precipitation may have isotopic manifestations that contradict the long-term pattern. Expedient use of these contradictions undermines the utility of speleothem δ

13C records in palaeoclimate reconstruction, but both of the

interpretations reflects is a poor appreciation of soil CO2 dynamics. They imply that heterotrophic soil CO2 dominates speleothem δ

13C values. In this study we monitored the δ

13C of soil CO2 at different

depths on a weekly basis at four locations in the savanna over a period of three years. The results demonstrate that autotrophic CO2 dominates the soil during the wet season when groundwater recharge takes place. The results provide an empirical link between precipitation and soil δ

13C that

allows a definitive interpretation of speleothem δ13

C records. The hypothesis is tested by comparing a 1000-year tree ring climate proxy for rainfall with the δ

13C record from Cold Air Cave (Holmgren et al.

2003). References: Holmgren, K., Lee-Thorp, J.A., Cooper, G., Lundblad, K.,Partridge, T.C., Scott, L., Sithaldeen, R., Talma, A.S. & Tyson, P.D., 2003. Persistent millennial-scale climatic variability over the past 25,000 years in Southern Africa. Quaternary Science Reviews

22, 2311–2326.



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O30: Leaf wax lipids as palaeoenvironmental proxies in southern Africa: analysis of modern analogues. A.S. Carr (1), A. Boom (1), H. Grimes (1), B.M Chase (2,3), M.E. Meadows (4), and M. Britton (4) (1) Department of Geography, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom (2) CNRS, Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution de Montpellier, Université Montpellier 2, France (3) Department of Archaeology, History, Culture and Religion, University of Bergen, Postbox 7805, 5020, Bergen, Norway (3) Department of Environmental & Geographical Science, University of Cape Town, South Africa Leaf wax lipids, specifically their concentrations, carbon chain length distributions and stable isotope compositions (δ

13C and δD) are increasingly used as palaeoenvironmental proxies. They have the

advantage of being both readily distributed in the environment and relatively resistant to degradation in sedimentary archives. In central and southern Africa n-alkane leaf waxes vary with source biome, and a broad distinction between savanna and rainforest biomes can be identified from waxes blown off the continent as well as in plant specimens (Rommerskirchen et al., 2003; Vogts et al., 2009). However, as with any proxy, the fundamental controls should be understood before a wider application in palaeoenvironmental research. The specific causes of changing leaf wax carbon chain length are not always clear and are potentially complex. In some circumstances biophysical responses to ambient conditions and chemo-taxonomic variability may be conflated. Given that relatively few modern plant species, communities or biomes have been analysed in a systematic manner there remains great potential to explore these issues further. Here we present leaf wax data from a systematic sampling campaign across the Succulent Karoo and Fynbos biomes of South Africa. We consider leaf waxes at source (plants), deposition at the local-scale (soils) and depositional contexts that integrate larger spatial and temporal scales. Preliminary data imply marked differences in n-alkane distributions between soils in the Succulent Karoo and Fynbos biomes. This is a promising finding given the presence of several palaeoenvironmental archives located close to the ecotone of these biomes (Chase et al., 2011). References: Chase, B.M. et al (2011) Late glacial inter-hemispheric climate dynamics revealed in South African hyrax middens. Geology,

39, 19-22. Rommerskirchen, F. et al (2003) A north to south transect of Holocene southeast Atlantic continental margin sediments: Relationship between aerosol transport and compound-specific δ

13C land plant biomarker and pollen records. Geochemistry

Geophysics Geosystems, 4, 1101. Vogts, A., Moossen, H., Rommerskirchen, F. & Rullkötter, J. (2009) Distribution patterns and stable carbon isotopic composition of alkanes and alkan-1-ols from plant waxes of African rain forest and savanna C3 species. Organic Geochemistry, 40 1037–

1054.

SASQUA 2012 - DELEGATES


44

ABSTRACTS

Poster Presentations



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P1: The rise and fall of the West African Monsoon: Fluctuations of Lake Chad over the last deglaciation and Holocene. S. J. Armitage (1), C.S. Bristow (2), N.A. Drake (3) (1) Centre for Quaternary Research, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of

London, Egham, Surrey, United Kingdom.

(2) School of Earth Sciences, Birkbeck College, University of London, Malet Street, London, United

Kingdom.

(3) Department of Geography, King’s College London, Strand, London, United Kingdom.

Palaeoclimate proxy data from North Africa and adjacent areas of the Atlantic provide contrasting

evidence regarding the rates and timing of climate change during the last deglaciation and Holocene.

The widely cited record from ODP site 658C indicates an abrupt onset and termination of a humid

period at 14.9 and 5.5 ka respectively. In contrast, the Lake Yoa record is interpreted to indicate a

progressive drying over the last c.6 ka. Both marine and lacustrine records document millennial to

centennial changes superimposed upon a broad increase and subsequent decrease in humidity since

the LGM. Here, we present a new lake level record for Lake Chad. Dunes and shorelines within the

Chad Basin were dated using Optically Stimulated Luminescence, yielding a detailed record of lake

oscillations. During the last deglaciation, this record is comparable with recent marine and terrestrial

reconstructions of West African moisture variation. However, the timing and style of mid-Holocene

desiccation differs from both the ODP site 658B and Lake Yoa records. The implications of these

findings for our understanding of West African Monsoon dynamics are discussed.



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P2: Characterisation of organic matter using pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (py-GC/MS): developing applications for palaeoenvironmental research A. Boom (1), A.S. Carr (1), B.M. Chase (2,3), M.E. Meadows (4), Z.E. Roberts (1), M. Britton (4),

A.M.J. Cumming (1)

(1) Department of Geography, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom

(2) CNRS, Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution de Montpellier, Université Montpellier 2, France

(3) Department of Archaeology, History, Culture and Religion, University of Bergen, Postbox 7805, 5020, Bergen, Norway (4) Department of Environmental & Geographical Science, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry is an analytical technique that elucidates the

structure and composition of macromolecular (“insoluble”) organic matter (OM). Through this it is

possible to assess the proportions / occurrence of OM components from specific sources (e.g. lignin

from higher plants), and to understand the extent / mechanisms of organic matter degradation in

sedimentary contexts. Here we present an overview of the technique and provide case studies

documenting its use in ecological and palaeoecological studies in southern Africa.

In the Succulent Karoo and Fynbos biomes OM of some characterise-able form is preserved in all

modern soils, even those from arid areas. The “character” of this soil OM reflects variation in the

occurrence of largely plant-derived organic compound classes (e.g. polysaccharide, lignin, and

waxes). Additional variability is imparted by soil substrate and ambient environmental conditions.

In the Quaternary this technique can be used in lacustrine contexts to trace the extent of OM

diagenesis and the relative significance of plant (terrestrial) and algal-derived (aquatic) OM inputs

(e.g. Carr et al., 2010). Such data can be integrated with other palaeoecological proxies, and the

sensitivity of the technique means that sedimentary sequences lacking other proxy data (e.g. pollen)

can still yield some information. This versatile technique can also be applied to much older material,

and in the case of Miocene lignites from the southern Cape, it provides insights into depositional

context, palaeoecology and OM preservation mechanisms.

References:

Carr, A.S., Boom, A., Chase, B.M., Roberts, D.L., Roberts, Z.E. (2010) Molecular fingerprinting of wetland organic matter using

pyrolysis-GC/MS: an example from the southern Cape coastline of South Africa. Journal of Paleolimnology, 44, 947-961



47

P3: Holocene landscape and ecosystem dynamics in central Southern Africa Sallie L. Burrough (1,2), David S.G. Thomas (1) and Kathy J. Willis (2)

(1) School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University, UK

(2) Long term Ecology Laboratory, Biodiversity Institute, Dept of Zoology, Oxford University, UK

Establishing a clear picture of Quaternary environmental change across the Kalahari basin has

proven both difficult and contentious. Accurately reconstructing the dynamics of environmental

change and its drivers requires us to be able to separate environmental signals and trends from the

high magnitude low frequency events characteristic of dryland systems. Additionally, understanding

the mechanisms of such palaeoenvironmental signals requires us to unpick environmental responses

from environmental drivers. Using new and existing data from the Kalahari basin, relating to both

landscape and ecological stability (OSL dated dune activity and palaeoecological records), we

consider how much we can understand about past regional environmental change during the

Holocene. In particular we examine:

i) How we integrate records of Quaternary landscape dynamics and ecosystem change

between and within drylands and other biomes on the African continent.

ii) Emerging hypotheses of late Holocene environmental stability in central Southern Africa.

iii) Past human-environment interactions in the Kalahari basin.



48

P4: Rock hyrax middens as southern African palaeoenvironmental archives. B.M. Chase (1, 2), V. Valsecchi (1), L. Truc (1), M.E. Meadows (3), L. Scott (4), L. Quick (3), A.S. Carr

(5), A. Boom (5), and P.J. Reimer (6)

(1) Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution de Montpellier, UMR 5554 Université Montpellier 2, Bat.22,

CC061, Place Eugène Bataillon,

34095 Montpellier, France;

(2) Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion

University of Bergen, 5020 Bergen, Norway;

(3) Department of Environmental and Geographical Science, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch

7701, South Africa;

(4) Department of Plant Sciences, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein 9300, South Africa;

(5) Department of Geography, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK;

(6) School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, BT7

1NN, Northern Ireland, UK

Although it is clear that significant climatic changes have occurred in the southern African sector of

the southern hemisphere, we have only limited, and often imprecise, knowledge of how the major

moisture-bearing atmospheric circulation systems have reacted to these changes, and how regional

environments have been impacted. This is due in large part to the region’s generally semi- to

hyperarid climate, which is not conducive to the preservation of organic material. Recent work,

however, has revealed that a valuable palaeoenvironmental archive does exist in this region. Rock

hyraxes (Procavia capensis), rodent-like herbivores common throughout southern Africa, defecate in

the same location for many generations. These locations, often sheltered in caves, preserve thick

accumulations of amber-like dried urine, known as hyraceum, which contains a wide range of

palaeoenvironmental proxies. Unlike the herbivore middens of North and South America and

Australia, the hyrax middens of southern Africa accumulate in coherent layers, preserving a

stratigraphic record of environmental change. Individual laminations can be as fine as 30 μm, and the

potential exists for annual or even seasonal records of environmental change spanning tens of

thousands of years. Presented here are the results of a number of research initiatives have been

launched to assess the potential of hyrax middens as palaeoenvironmental archives, and to analyse

their constituent proxy records to answer questions about southern African environmental change.

These records are playing an increasingly important role in the development of conceptual models of

regional and hemispheric environmental dynamics over the last 50 ka.



49

P5: Hyrax middens: a southern perspective on long-term African climate change. B.M. Chase (1, 2), V. Valsecchi (1), L. Truc (1), M.E. Meadows (3), L. Scott (4), L. Quick (3), A.S. Carr (5), A. Boom (5), and P.J. Reimer (6) (1) Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution de Montpellier, UMR 5554 Université Montpellier 2, Bat.22,

CC061, Place Eugène Bataillon,

34095 Montpellier, France;

(2) Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion

University of Bergen, 5020 Bergen, Norway;

(3) Department of Environmental and Geographical Science, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch

7701, South Africa;

(4) Department of Plant Sciences, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein 9300, South Africa;

(5) Department of Geography, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK;

(6) School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, BT7

1NN, Northern Ireland, UK

The scarcity of continuous, well-dated high resolution records of climate change from southern Africa

has severely restricted our ability to understand long-term climate variability in the region. Recent

work has revealed that stable isotope records from hyrax middens provide a valuable tool for

understanding the nature and history of rapid climate change in southern Africa. Resolved to decadal

timescales and spanning thousands of years, these records are allowing for unprecedented insight

into the dynamics of late Pleistocene and Holocene environmental change in the region. Presented

here are results from a selection of middens from southern Africa’s western margin. Spanning the last

29 kyr, these records elucidate the long-term dynamics of - and interrelationship between - tropical,

subtropical and mid-latitude oceanic and atmospheric circulation systems, and the impact of changes

in these systems on southern Africa. These findings provide a context within which the regions more

climatically ambiguous ‘geo-proxies’ can be interpreted, and prevailing conceptual models can be

tested and refined. Key amongst these findings are clear manifestations of events such the Younger

Dryas, the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period and the “2700 BP Event”, which provide evidence

for the existence and nature of teleconnections with other elements of the global climate system. Also

clarified is the dominance of high latitude over low latitude forcing on tropical moisture-bearing

systems during the Holocene, and the strong influence of Antarctic sea-ice extent on the impact of

mid-latitude frontal systems in southwestern Africa. These data represent one of the few times that

these events and relationships have been reliably identified in southern African drylands, allowing not

only for the region to contribute to the discussion and debate of the climatic drivers and feedbacks,

but also providing important evidence regarding the extent and impact of forcing mechanisms at the

global scale.



50

P6: In the pooh or out?: pollen taphonomy in coprolites Graciela Gil-Romera (1), Frank Neumann (2, 3), Louis Scott (4), Yolanda Fernández-Jalvo (5)

(1) Pyrenean Institute of Ecology – CSIC. Zaragoza, Spain.

(2) Forschungsstelle für Paläobotanik, University of Münster, Germany

(3) Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontology, Witwatersrand, Johannesburg- South Africa

(4) Department of Plant Sciences, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein Bloemfontein, South

Africa.

(5) Museo Nacional de Ciencia Naturales- CSIC. Madrid Spain

In drylands pollen is usually not preserved as fossils in sediments but do often survive in hyena

coprolites. We investigate the process of pollen trapping in recent hyena scats in order to aid

paleoenvironmental and vegetation reconstructions based on pollen analyses from hyaena coprolites.

The pollen input into the coprolite is assumed to be from two main sources:

1) The environment including airborne pollen trapped on the scat surface after defecation.

2) The animal’s diet including accidentally ingested flowers, secondary pollen from occasionally

ingested stomachs of herbivores or even carnivores that previously swallowed flowers, or

secondary pollen from source 1 sticking to any other dietary sources.

Our objectives are first to test whether hyena coprolites are good representatives of vegetation and

seasonal/climatic change through their pollen contents, and second, to test whether there is

noticeable difference in pollen input from the two sources. Answering these questions will allow us to

know more about how pollen becomes incorporated into the fossil record through coprolites.

In order to examine the different pollen inputs into the coprolites we have analyzed eleven modern

hyena scats from the Tswalu Game Reserve and seven hyena coprolites from Equus Cave in the

southern Kalahari. Comparisons were made between the pollen contents from the outer fraction,

which most likely corresponds to the airborne pollen caught on the scat surface, and the inner

fraction, probably stemming from the animal’s diet. Three surface pollen samples from nearby

locations were used as controls.

The comparison focused on three essential aspects:

a) Significant differences on the number of taxa found between the two fractions and the

control. This was simply done by counting the different pollen species in every sample.

b) Significant differences in the pollen concentration of relevant taxa. Applying Student’s t

tests to the most relevant taxa -mainly those with more than 3 pollen grains in more than

one sample- we tried to test the hypothesis of equality of the group means in paired inner

and outer samples samples.

c) Significant differences in the global pollen composition, considering presence/absence of

different species and their amounts. Detrended correspondenceance analysis was used

to look for similarities between paired inner and outer parts of scats.

Some preliminary results suggest some taxa are represented better in scats than the surface

samples, e.g., Combretaceae, Rhus, Artemisia, Poaceae, Labiatae, or Cyperaceae. It is shown that

the pollen isolated in biogenic deposits from hyenas is probably derived from a mixture of airborne

pollen and the animal’s diet with no spatial preference for it to be deposited in any particular section of

the scat. It is concluded that hyena scats act as relatively good pollen traps representative of

surrounding vegetation.



51

P7: AnNa Waters pilot project: WP1 Long-term ecosystem dynamics and anthropogenic processes of the Cuvelai catchment J. Käyhkö (1), P. Alho (1), F. Becker (2), R.G. Bryant (3), S.D. Gurney (4), M. Hipondoka (2), J.S. Jauhiainen (1), K. Jylhä (5), V. Kinyaga (6), N. Käyhkö (1), B. Mauz (7), C. J. Mesmer (1), S. N. Namushinga-Heita (1), A. Nehemia (8), G. L. Miguel (9), C. Riberio (10), J. Röhrig (11), T. Saarinen (1), A. Teixeira-Pinto (10), B. Vehviläinen (12), G.S.F. Wiggs (13) and K. White (4)

(1) Department of Geography and Geology, University of Turku (UTU), Finland (2) Department of Geography, University of Namibia (UNAM), Namibia (3) Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, UK (4) Department of Geography, The University of Reading, UK (5) Climate Section, Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI), Finland (6) Desert Research Foundation of Namibia (DRFN), Namibia (7) Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Liverpool, UK (8) Department of Water Affairs, Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry, Namibia (9) Science Faculty & Ministry of Research (MESCT), Universidade Agostinho Neto, Angola (10) Lubango Campus, Universidade Privada de Angola (UPRA), Angola (11) Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE), Germany (12) Hydrology Section, Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), Finland (13) School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, UK

The ongoing pilot phase of AnNa Waters WP1 investigates past water magnitudes and sedimentary environments using sedimentological and palaeoecological evidence (for distant past) plus, remote sensing, weather data and discharge data (for recent past) to unravel the interconnectedness between climatic factors and catchment dynamics. Sedimentological work on oshanas, pans and aeolian deposits is expected to serve as a proxy for vegetation, surface dynamics and water availability and shed light on the nature of the ecosystem and its development during the Holocene. The sedimentological work will include field sampling/coring and description of fluvial, lacustrine and aeolian deposits, and their laboratory analyses, including textural properties (X-ray density), geochemistry (micro-XRF) and magnetism for provenance, plus palaeoecology and dating (

14C, OSL,

cf. Clarke & Käyhkö 1997). Climate-discharge interconnections will be analysed with careful analysis of available discharge data, field mapping and monitoring of oshana dynamics combined with remotely sensed data (e.g., Bryant 2003, White et al. 2007). Discharge data will be correlated with inundation patterns by employing hydraulic modelling techniques (e.g. HEC-RAS) and critically evaluated for accuracy in terms of the DTM resolution (Alho et al. 2009). For changes in land cover patterns, rather than measuring of optimal landscape configuration at a given moment in time, Landscape Change Trajectory Analysis (LCTA) emphasises understanding of transitions and driving forces in landscape (Käyhkö & Skånes 2006). LCTA seeks to identify long-term evolutionary processes rather than random evens of difference and change, extending retrospectively several decades, sometimes centuries (Käyhkö & Skånes 2008). References: Alho P., Hyyppä, H. & Hyyppä J., (2009). Consequence of DTM Precision for Flood Hazard Mapping: A Case Study in SW Finland, Nordic Journal of Surveying and Real Estate Research 6, 21–39. Bryant, R. G. (2003). Monitoring hydrological controls on dust emissions: preliminary observations from Etosha Pan, Namibia, Geographical Journal, 169(2) 131–141. doi:10.1111/1475-4959.04977. Clarke, M. & J. Käyhkö (1997). Evidence of Holocene aeolian activity in sand dunes from Lapland. Quaternary Science Reviews (Quaternary Geochronology) 16, 341–348. Käyhkö N & Skånes, H (2006). Change trajectories and key biotopes – assessing landscape dynamics and sustainability. Landscape and Urban Planning 75, 300–321. Käyhkö, N & Skånes, H. (2008). Retrospective land cover/land use change trajectories as drivers behind the local distribution and abundance patterns of oaks in south-western Finland. Landscape and Urban Planning 88, 12–22. White, K., Walden, J. & Gumey, S. D. (2007). Spectral properties, iron oxide content and provenance of Namib dune sands. Geomorphology, 86, 219–229.



52

P8: A 2000 yr high-resolution diatom record at Princess Vlei, Cape Town K. Kirsten (1), M.E. Meadows (1) (1) Department of Environmental & Geographical Science, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa The ‘Cape Flats’ region, a low-lying tombola underlain by Tertiary to Recent fluvial and aeolian sands,

is characterised by numerous small lakes and wetlands. One of these is Princess Vlei, a eutrophic,

freshwater coastal lake assumed to be the oldest in the region (Harding, 1992). The lake lies in a

dune depression encroached by high density residential, industrial and agricultural land uses. A

210cm core extracted from within the lake yielded high diatom fossil concentrations from the upper

174cm. Preliminary results suggest a relatively moist period with eutrophic conditions and deeper

water between 173 and 135cm, followed by the development of oligotrophic and fresh to brackish-

fresh conditions during what appears to have been a drier phase. A short-lived period of deeper water

depths and meso-eutrophic conditions is observed between 23 and 13 cm. Poly-hypertrophic, alkaline

species are abundant in the top 20cm that may possibly correspond to anthropogenic forcing since

the European colonisation of the 17th century. The top few centimetres of the core have been

excluded from the analysis due to post core-retrieval disturbance. Comparison with pollen analysis of

a core by Neumann et al. (2011) facilitates a tentative chronology; a hiatus near the surface may

correlate with the water layer described by Neumann et al. (2011). Samples have been submitted for

radiocarbon analysis to assist in the reconstruction of the past environment in the Cape Flats region.

References:

Harding, W. R. (1992) A contribution to the knowledge of South African coastal vleis: The limnology and phytoplankton

periodicity of Princess Vlei, Cape Peninsula. WaterSA, 18, 121-130

Neumann, F.H. Scott L. & Bamford M.K. (2011) Climate change and human disturbance of fynbos vegetation during the late

Holocene at Princess Vlei, Western Cape, South Africa, The Holocene, 21, 1137-1149



53

P9: Terrestrial gastropods from Blombos Cave, South Africa: Research potential G. H.J. Langejans (1), G. L. Dusseldorp (1), C. S. Henshilwood

(1) Centre for Anthropological Research, University of Johannesburg, PO Box 524, Auckland Park

2006, South Africa, Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

(2) Institute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, PO box WITS 2050,

South Africa

The Pleistocene is characterised by variable climate and precipitation regimes and little is known

about the local environmental settings of many Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites in southern Africa.

Moreover, recent research shows that local climatic circumstances do not mirror global climatic trends

recorded in ice and deep sea cores. However, climatic changes play an important role in discussions

surrounding the developments in human behaviour.

In this paper we explore the use of terrestrial gastropods as local climatic and environmental

indicators. To do so we characterised a sample of land snails from the Blombos Cave sequence

(Western Cape Province, South Africa) in terms of mean relative humidity (January), mean annual

precipitation and mean annual temperature range. The characteristics of the identified six species and

two genera (N=53) indicate that during the Blombos phases M3 (~100 ka) and M1 (~78.8 ka to ~71.0

ka) humidity was probably somewhere between 75-79 %. The average annual precipitation was

between 927-1118 mm and the annual average temperature was most likely between 11-23 °C. In the

Blombos phase M2 (~76.8 to ~84.6 ka) the temperature was similar to the other phases, but because

we did not identify any habitat-specific species with regard to humidity and precipitation from the M2,

their ranges can at present not be reconstructed. The humidity and temperature during the M3, M1

and the temperature of M2 are similar to present-day values. Interestingly, precipitation appears to

have been much higher than nowadays during the M1 and M3 occupations. Clearly the sample is

small and therefore the proposed environmental reconstructions are not definitive.

One challenge for gastropod analysis is that information (on species level) on the environmental

tolerance is limited. However, an extensive characterisation of the current gastropod distribution could

lead to very fine-grained environmental reconstructions. For example, South Africa has 447 terrestrial

mollusc species, while there are only 338 mammal species; the molluscs have more constrained

niches. We hope that this contribution will serve to focus attention on this underappreciated source of

past environmental information.




54

P10: Orientation of maximum horizontal stress of the western and south-eastern offshore basins of South Africa A. Logue (1,2), O. Heidbach (3) M.A.G. Andreoli (1,4), Z. Ben-Avraham (2,5), A. Le Roex (2) (1) Nurad, Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa, P.O.Box 582, Pretoria, 0001 (2) Department of Geological Science, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch (3) GeoForschungsZentrum-Potsdam (GFZ), Germany (4) School of Geosciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (5) Tel Aviv University, Israel Utilising borehole breakout, measured using caliper logs provided by the Petroleum Agency SA, we

aim to derive the offshore and near shore orientation of the maximum horizontal stress (SH) on the

western and south-eastern coastal-shelf of South Africa.

Knowledge of the SH orientation is important for reservoir management e.g. for borehole

stability analysis, preferred fluid flow directions in reservoirs and to model the geomechanical effects

of reservoir depletion. In nuclear industry, the same data are vital in selecting sites for both nuclear

power plants (currently located or proposed along the west or south-eastern coastline) and waste

disposal. Firstly, the stress orientation, coupled an understanding of the dominant stress regime and

the orientation of regional and local geological structures (faults, fractures etc.), can allow for the

identification of structures most likely to experience reactivation. Secondly, stress orientation data can

be used in modelling and predicting the mechanical stability of waste repository designs at depth.

Using software developed for, and by, the WSM team, the data can be converted into both

regional and local stress maps to supplement current data and be used for creation of more accurate,

local stress orientation trends and smoothed regional stress fields. This data can be used to predict

the behaviour of offshore and near-shore geological structures supplementing geological and seismic

data. Comparisons of off- and near-shore data with inland data could also give an indication of the

impact of the escarpment topography on regional crustal stresses operating on Southern Africa.

We will show preliminary results of a subset of the over 130 boreholes to be analysed and

consider supporting stress orientation data collected for the interior of southern Africa.

Figure 1: Analysis of selected borehole logs for the west and south-east coastline. Most current data appear to support the presence of a NW-SE compressional stress field (SHmax orientation shown).



55

P11: Biome organisation at the Fynbos-Succulent Karoo ecotone on the Kamiesberg granites. J. MacPherson (1), L. Gillson (1), T. Hoffman (1).

(1) Botany Department, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7701, Cape Town, South Africa.

Future climate and land use changes are predicted to have highly detrimental effects on the distribution and biodiversity of the Fynbos and Succulent Karoo biomes. Controls on biome distribution are however highly complex and inadequately resolved. Previous palaeoecological studies have revealed remarkable stability at the biome boundary, which is attributed to a) strong substrate control on biome distribution; b) greater drought tolerance in Succulent Karoo and fire tolerance in Fynbos; c) apparent climatic stability in the recent geological past. I present palaeoecological data (principally from fossil pollen and charcoal) from the Kamiesberg Mountains, Namaqualand, where the Fynbos-Succulent Karoo ecotone unfolds over granite-derived substrates. These data should allow further definition of the nature of controls on biome distribution, in particular on the importance of factors other than substrate such as climate and disturbance. In addition, these data will help to assess whether biomes are cohesive units that transition between alternate stable states, or weakly organised assemblages that may have no future analogue.



56

P12: Note on the fossil fauna and flora at Ongongo Springs,

Damaraland.

H. Mocke (1)

(1) National Earth Science Museum, Geological Survey of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia

Knowledge of Quaternary aged fossils in Namibia is somewhat lacking, although several such sites

have been identified for example by Hermann Korn and Henno Martin. The community run Ongongo

Springs in Western Namibia yielded thick layers of tufa (freshwater carbonate) containing a rich

collection of impressions of macroscopic fossil plant leaves, roots, branches and trunks. The leaf

impressions show mostly primary venation, making their identification very difficult. The absence of

organic material within the preserved leaves, roots, stems and trunks makes C14 dating impossible.

However, dating of the tufas will ascertain when the plant matter was covered by the precipitated

material. A possible sedge leaf was noted and impressions of what appear to be those of the

sycamore fig, Ficus sycomorus (Family Moraceae) and Mopane, Colophospermum mopane (Family

Fabaceae) leaves. However, no fruits or seeds were found. To date only a single vertebrate fossil has

been reported by a visitor to the springs. It has been suggested that it is the impression of a frog

skeleton. Land snails were observed in the tufas and surrounding calcretes and are comparable to the

modern species Sculptaria in general morphology. No dating has as yet been done on the tufa, due to

an absence of dating equipment in Namibia.

References:

Korn, H. & Martin, H. (1937). Die jüngere geologische und klimatische Geschichte Südwestafrikas. Zentralblatt für Mineralogie,

Geologie und Paläontologie, B11, 456-473.

Korn, H. & Martin, H. (1955). The Pleistocene in South West Africa. Proceedings of the 3rd

Pan-African Congress on Prehistory,

Livingstone, 14-22.

Miller, R. McG. (2008). The Geology of Namibia. Volume 3- Palaeozoic to Cenozoic, Ministry of Mines & Energy, Geological

Survey, Chapters 24-25, 690pp.

Ward, J. D. (1987). The Cenozoic succession in the Kuiseb Valley, central Namib Desert. Memoir Geological Survey Namibia,

9, 124pp.



57

P13: Palaeoclimate and ecosystems of the Pleistocene in South Africa as archived in the Kalkkop Crater Lake deposit. P. Mthembi (1), D. Roberts (1), C. Harris (2), R. Smith (3)

(1) Council for Geoscience, Bellville, South Africa

(2) Department of Geological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch

(3) Iziko South African Museum, Cape Town, South Africa

The Kalkkop crater is one of 18 craters found in the African continent, and there are about 170 impact

structures that have been recorded on Earth. Studies show that only a few craters in South Africa

have been identified as impact craters, and Kalkkop crater has been found to be of impact origin.

Since the accretion stage of planets, impact cratering has played a major role in the geological and

biological evolution of our planet, Koeberl (1994). In South Africa both cosmic impact and endogenic

Crater Lake deposits of various ages occur and these craters include the Palaeoproterozoic

Vredefort, Early Cretaceous Morokweng crater, and Middle Pleistocene Tswaing and Kalkkop craters.

Crater lakes are essentially closed systems, being fed mainly by meteoric water (rainfall) and are

slowly filled by sediments. The Kalkkop Crater Lake project is focused on an 89m core that was drilled

in mid-1992 in the Kalkkop crater by Council for Geoscience. Extensive mapping and logging of the

core as well as Isotope studies are done for direct correlation with the marine isotope record to

provide a high resolution chronology for the crater facies.

References:

Koeberl, C. 1994. African meteorite impact craters: Characteristics and geological importance. Journal African Earth Sciences

16, 263-295.



58

P14: Optically stimulated luminescence dating of marine terraces of the Skeleton Coast, Namibia. A. Nguno (1), H. Stollhofen (2) and I. Stanistreet (3) (1) Geological Survey of Namibia, Ministry of Mines and Energy, Private Bag 13297, 6 Aviation road, Windhoek, Namibia (2) GeoZentrum Nordbayern, FG Krustendynamik, Universität Erlangen, Schlossgarten, 5, (3) Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Liverpool, Brownlow Street, PO Box 147, Liverpool, L69 3BX, UK Marine terraces of Pleistocene to recent age occur along the coastal plain between the Uniab and Hoanib Rivers (northwestern Namibia), resting unconformable on basalt and quartz latite of the Cretaceous Etendeka Group and Cambrian Damara granite. Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) studies of the sand sediment from the marine terraces were made at the following elevations above mean sea level: 3-4m (Terrace 1), 6-7m (Terrace 2), 9-10m (Terrace 3), and 15-16m (Terrace 4). Samples for OSL analysis were collected from foreshore and backshore sediments of the marine terraces. Both potassium feldspar and quartz minerals were used for OSL dating. The study revealed that except for a lower marine terrace of Holocene sediments, the three upper marine terraces (T2, T3 & T4) sediments were deposited during the Pleistocene epoch. The Feldspar luminescence ages indicate that the two upper marine terraces sediments were deposited between marine isotope stage MIS-5 and MIS 6.



59

P15: A preliminary assessment of bedform change following high floods on the Kuiseb river, central Namibia S. Ringrose (1, 3), W. Matheson (1), L. Cassidy (2), M. Seely (3),

(1) Sunart Enterprises, Maun, Botswana

(2) Okavango Research Institute, University of Botswana, Maun, Botswana

(3) Gobabeb Research and Training Institute, Walvis Bay, Namibia

The ephemeral Kuiseb river flows intermittently for 420 km from the Khomas Hochland highlands to

the coast at Walvis Bay, Namibia. Analysis of the flood regime in terms of flood days at Gobabeb

indicates that floods of > 40 days duration are major events while most floods lasting 5-10 days have

little effect on river bedforms. The last major flood occurred in March 2011. This work assesses the

extent of sediment/bedform ‘state’ resulting from this last major flood to assist in river bed

management. Sediment sampling took place along seven floodplain wide transects at upstream, mid-

stream and downstream locations. This resulted in bedform identification as primary and secondary

river beds, river dunes and silts banks the spatial distribution of which is dependent on floodplain

width. Sediment samples from all the major bedforms were used to develop baseline data.

Granulometric analysis showed downstream trends which differ for the individual bedforms but

generally show a comminution in grain size downstream. Changes in floodplain characteristics were

mapped using Google Earth and SRTM2 imagery from which cross-profile elevation data were

generated for 2002. Results indicate that while much of the mid-stream floodplain is protected by

vegetation cover, this also assists in trapping sand and silt leading to the aggradation of silt banks and

river dunes during major flood episodes. During a major flood many pre-existing silt banks are eroded

contributing to the high silt proportions in the suspended load, while the cohesive nature of the silt

leads to the development of ‘silt rafts’ which add to the river bed clastic sediment load. Google Earth

imagery provided change over time data for one of the downstream transects which showed that

while about 1/3 of the floodplain was modified by the deposition of sand and silt in primary and new

secondary channels since the last flood, most of the pre-existing floodplain format has remained

unchanged since 2006.



60

P16: 18,000 years of grassland evolution in the summer rainfall region of South Africa – evidence from Mahwaqa mountain, KwaZulu-Natal F.H. Neumann (1), G.A. Botha (2), and L. Scott (3)

(1) Forschungsabteilung Paläobotanik, University of Münster, Germany

(2) Council for Geoscience, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

(3) Department of Plant Sciences, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa

A palynological and sedimentological record from the Mahwaqa mountain at 1,850m situated near

Bulwer, KwaZulu-Natal, shows the vegetation dynamics of the grassland over the last 18,000 yrs. This

isolated mountain outlier of the Ukhahlamba-Drakensberg mountain range comprises an ecotone on a

steep climatic gradient that has responded to humidity and temperature changes during the late

Pleistocene and Holocene. An analysis of non-pollen palynomorphs, especially fungal spores, adds

palaeoecological information. The high percentages of Ericaceae at Mahwaqa between 18,000 and

16,500 yr BP are unmatched by other records in the grassland biome and point to lower temperatures

at the site. Restionaceae dominate the wetland vegetation during that period while Cyperaceae and

cryptogams are rare. The transition from cool late Pleistocene to warm Holocene conditions in the

sequence occurs between 16,000 and 7,000 yr BP (pending final counts for this section). The high

ratio of Asteraceae (including Pentzia type) to Poaceae pollen between 5,500 and 4,000 BP, as well

as high percentages of Scabiosa signal drier conditions. An increase of sedge, Aponogeton and grass

pollen plus a decrease of Asteraceae pollen is interpreted as a return of humid conditions at c. 4,000

BP. Since 2,000 BP an increase of water demanding Podocarpus and Cliffortia occurs. A

simultaneous increase in variety and quantity of the fungi also point to even wetter conditions during

the late Holocene. The fire regime might have played a role in the spread of trees as shown by the

decrease of different size classes of charcoal since 1,200 BP.



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P17: Multi-scale 3D-data for the reconstruction of Late Pleistocene terrain, environment and cave evolution Eastern Desert, Egypt O. Bubenzer (1), M. Ritter (1), A. Bolten (1), D. Hoffmeister (1), K. Kindermann (2) (1) Geographical Institute, University of Cologne, Germany (CRC 806 – Our way to Europe) (2) Institute of Prehistoric Archaeology, University of Cologne, Germany (CRC 806 – Our way to Europe) Interdisciplinary geoarchaeological field work takes place in and around Sodmein Cave in Egypt´s Eastern Desert, one of the CRC 806 investigation areas in north-eastern Africa. It forms an exceptional site of human occupation, located in an isolated Tertiary limestone complex (Jebel Duwi) in the Egyptian Red Sea Mountains, around 30 km west of the seaport of Quseir. Here it can be seen that topography (e.g. wadis, basins) and palaeo-environment (e.g. climate, hydrography, vegetation) could have played an important role in the dispersal of modern humans out of Africa. We used high resolution 3D-data (WorldView-2 DEM, DGPS, terrestrial laser scanning) to calculate the size of Sodmein Cave and to find reasons for its evolution, to reconstruct the wadi terraces and the palaeo-hydrography since MIS 6. There are three different landscape units around Sodmein Cave that form the determining the features: Pre-Cambrian basement, Eocene limestone and Quaternary wadi deposits. All three types interfinger and create an unique setting for the Eastern Desert that has to be investigated in more detail. The figure shows the 3D-laserscan of Sodmein Cave and the tectonic structure of the Eocene limestone. The three-dimensional model serves also for volumetric calculations.



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P18: A varied ecological profile for Paranthropus robustus C.M. Steininger

Institute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand, Republic of South Africa

There is ongoing speculation about how an increasingly arid environment contributed to the extinction

of Paranthropus robustus, given that a predominantly open grassland environment remains the

persistent palaeo-ecological reconstruction for this species (Lee-Thorp et al. 2007; de Ruiter et al.

2008). It has been suggested that P. robustus, a dietary specialist, was not able to adapt to an

increasingly xeric habitat (Grine 1981; Kay and Grine 1988). This notion is challenged by recent multi-

disciplinary research on P. robustus remains, including stable light isotope and dental microwear

analyses, which portray a more complex diet (Lee-Thorp et al. 1994; Scott et al. 2005). This hominin

species is present in a number of key fossil assemblages spanning the period ca. 1.8 and 1.0 Ma.

Analysis of the stable carbon isotope composition of bioapatites and microwear of different bovid taxa,

associated with P. robustus remains from four discrete facies from Swartkrans and Cooper’s Cave,

were used to reconstruct the dietary behaviours and by inference availability of local resources. The

overall pattern emerging from the bovid data indicates a more mixed and varied diet than previously

thought, demonstrating a heterogeneous environment in time and space, and hence a less static

ecological profile for Paranthropus. The significant occurrence of mixed diets and relatively few

obligate grazers suggests that although C4 grasses were available in a mosaic environment, a C4-

dominated ecosystem was not present. Thus, despite its derived craniodental morphology, P.

robustus seems to have thrived through a range of ecological shifts (Steininger 2011).

References:

de Ruiter, D.J., Sponheimer, M. & Lee-Thorp, J.A. (2008) Indications of habitat association of Australopithecus robustus in the

Bloubank Valley, South Africa. Journal of Human Evolution, 55, 1015–1030.

Grine, F.E. (1981) Trophic differences between 'gracile' and 'robust' australopithecines: A scanning electron microscope

analysis of occlusal events. South African Journal of Science, 77, 203–230.

Kay, R.F., Grine, F.E. (1988) Tooth morphology, wear and diet in Australopithecus and Paranthropus from Southern Africa. In

F.E. Grine (Ed.), Evolutionary History of the “Robust” Australopithecines. Aldine de Gruyter, New York, 427–447.

Lee-Thorp, J.A. and van der Merwe, N.J., Brain, C.K. (1994) Diet of Australopithecus robustus at Swartkrans from stable

carbon isotopic analysis. Journal of Human Evolution, 27, 361–372.

Lee-Thorp, J.A., Sponheimer, M. & Luyt, J. (2007) Tracking changing environments using stable carbon isotopes in fossil tooth

enamel: An example from the South African hominin sites. Journal of Human Evolution, 53, 595–601.

Scott, R.S., Ungar, P.S., Bergstrom, T.S., Brown, C.A., Grine, F.E., Teaford, M.F., and Walker, A. (2005) Dental microwear

texture analysis shows within-species diet variability in fossil hominins. Nature, 436, 693–695.

Steininger, C.M. (2011) Dietary Behaviour of Plio-Pleistocene Bovids from Cooper’s Cave and Swartkrans, South Africa. Ph.D.

thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, RSA.



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P19: Rain in the Desert Sand: unsaturated zone profiles of chloride for recharge rate assessment and observations from nitrate profiles. A. E. C. Stone, W. M. Edmunds, D. S. G. Thomas School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University, United Kingdom The sand dunes of the Kalahari dunefield make up the uppermost part of the unsaturated zone of the Stampriet Basin, covering ~80% of the basin’s surface. The dune pore water contains information relating to rainfall input and evapotranspirative losses of water and about biological processes. Depth profiles can be converted to temporal records using mass balance approaches. This research utilises the concentration of anions down-profile in sampled dune cores in order to: (i) investigate the direct recharge pathway through the dunefield (which is the uppermost unsaturated zone), using the chloride mass balance approach and (ii) consider the production of nitrate in the unsaturated zone, in light of high nitrate levels in groundwater. Whilst these first four profiles cover a few decades, longer cores will have the potential to extend this record further back in time. This research is important for understanding the hydrological processes operating in the 65,000 km

2

transboundary Stampriet Basin, which will inform groundwater resource management, to address the challenge of water security (quantity and quality) in this dryland region. Groundwater is utilised for agricultural and domestic uses, and the majority of abstraction comes from the uppermost, unconfined Kalahari aquifer unit (which is in contact with the dune sands above). Whilst previous research indicates that the aquifers underneath the Kalahari were last substantially recharged in the mid-Holocene with low rates of current recharge of 1 to 5 mm/y (e.g. de Vries et al., 2000), this research indicates higher modern-day recharge rates of between 7 and 46 mm/y. References: deVries, J. J., Selaolo, E. T., Beekman, H. E. (2000) Groundwater recharge in the Kalahari, with reference to palaeo-hydrologic conditions. Journal of Hydrology, 238, 110-123.



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DELEGATES

AKAEGBOBI IM, Department of Geology, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria

[email protected]

ARMITAGE S, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, UK

[email protected]

AVERY DM, Emeritus Associate, Iziko Museums of Cape Town, PO Box 61,

Cape Town 8000 [email protected]

AVERY G, Curator/Scientist: Quaternary Collections, Iziko Museums of Cape

Town, PO Box 61, Cape Town 8000 [email protected]

BAMFORD M, BPI Palaeontology, Wits University, Private Bag 3, WITS 2050

[email protected]

BOTHA G, Council for Geoscience, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

[email protected]

BROWNING C, PO Box 572, Council for Geoscience, Bellville 7535, South Africa

[email protected]

BURROUGH S, School of Geography and Environment, Oxford University

Centre for the Environment, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK

[email protected]

CARR AS, Department of Geography, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1

7RH UK [email protected]

CAWTHRA H, Council for Geoscience, P O Box 572, Bellville, 7535

[email protected]

CHASE BM, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Institut des

Sciences de l’Evolution de Montpellier, UMR 5554, Université Montpellier 2,

Bat.22, CC061, Place Eugène Bataillon, 34095 Montpellier, cedex5, France

[email protected]

and

Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion

University of Bergen, 5020 Bergen, Norway

[email protected]

CHEDDADI R, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Institut des













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[email protected]

COLLINS J, MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of

Bremen, Bremen, Germany, [email protected]

CORDOVA C, Department of Geography, 225 Scott Hall Oklahoma State

University, Stillwater, OK 74078 [email protected]

DU PLESSIS N, Department of Environmental & Geographical Science,

University of Cape Town, P/BX3 Rondebosch, 7700 [email protected]

ECKARDT, F, Department of Environmental & Geographical Science,

University of Cape Town, P/BX3 Rondebosch, 7700 [email protected]

FERNANDEZ-JALVO Y, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (CSIC), Dept.

Paleobiologia Jose Gutierrez Abascal, 2. 28006-Madrid (Spain)

[email protected]

FINCH J, Geography, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Private Bag X01, Scottsville

3209, South Africa [email protected]

GIL-ROMERA G, Dept. of Geo-environmental Processes and Global Change

Pyrenean Institute of Ecology – CSIC, Campus de Aula Dei. Avda.

Montañana 1005, CP 50159 Zaragoza, Spain [email protected]

HEINE K, Phil. Fak. I, University of Regensburg, 93040 Regensburg, Germany

[email protected]

HILL T, Discipline of Geography, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg,

Private Bag X01 Scottsville 3209 [email protected]

HIPONDOKA M, Geography, History and Environmental Studies, University of

Namibia, Namibia [email protected]

KÄYHKÖ J, Geography Division, Department of Geography and Geology,

University of Turku, Finland [email protected]

KINAHAN J, Namib Desert Archaeological Survey, P.O. Box 22407, Windhoek,

Namibia [email protected]

KIRSTEN K, Department of Environmental & Geographical Science, University

of Cape Town, P/BX3 Rondebosch, 7700 [email protected]

LANGEJANS G, Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, PO box 9515, 2300

RA, Leiden, The Netherlands

and















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University of Johannesburg, Centre for Anthropological Research, South

Africa [email protected]

LENNOX SJ, School of Geosciences, University of Witwatersrand,

Johannesburg, South Africa [email protected]

LODDER J, Geography, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Private Bag X01,

Scottsville 3209, South Africa [email protected]

LOGUE A, Nurad, Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa, P.O.Box 582,

Pretoria, [email protected]

and

Department of Geological Science, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch

MacHUTCHON MR, Council for Geoscience, South Africa

[email protected]

MACKAY A, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National

University, Australia [email protected]

MacPHERSON J, Botany Department, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch

7701, Cape Town, South Africa [email protected]

MEADOWS M, Department of Environmental & Geographical Science,

University of Cape Town, Rondebosch [email protected]

MILLER R. McG, Consulting Geologist, PO Box 11222, Windhoek, Namibia

[email protected]

MOCKE H, National Earth Science Museum, Geological Survey of Namibia,

Windhoek, Namibia [email protected]

MTHEMBI P, Council for Geoscience, Bellville, South Africa

[email protected]

NGUNO A, Geological Survey of Namibia, Ministry of Mines and Energy,

Private Bag 13297, 6 Aviation road, Windhoek, Namibia

[email protected]

NICHOLSON S, Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences,

Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA [email protected]

QUICK L, Department of Environmental & Geographical Science, University of

Cape Town, P/BX3 Rondebosch, 7700 [email protected]















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RINGROSE S, Sunart Enterprises, Maun, Botswana

and

Gobabeb Research and Training Institute, Walvis Bay, Namibia

[email protected]

RITTER M, Geographical Institute, University of Cologne, Germany

[email protected]

ROBERTS DL, Council for Geoscience, Bellville, South Africa

[email protected]

SCOTT L, Department of Plant Sciences, University of the Free State,

Bloemfontein South Africa [email protected]

SEALY J, Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch

[email protected]

SIEVERS C, School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies,

University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

[email protected]

STEININGER C, Institute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand,

Republic of South Africa [email protected]

STONE A, School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University,

United Kingdom [email protected]

THOMAS DSG, School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University,

United Kingdom [email protected]

TRUC L, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Institut des



[email protected]

VALSECCHI V, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Institut des



[email protected]

WARD CJ, [email protected]

WOODBORNE S, Natural Resources and the Environment, CSIR, Box 395, 0001

Pretoria, South Africa [email protected]














SASQUA 2012 - OBITUARIES


68

OBITUARIES

SASQUA 2012 - IN MEMORIAM OF HILARY JOHN DEACON


69

IN MEMORIAM

HILARY JOHN DEACON

1936 –2010

Using the flat end of a stern brush, Hilary Deacon whisked away sediment to

expose segments lying by a fireplace where they had been abandoned

more than 60,000 years ago. With deft movements, he and his sharp trowel

unravelled complex stratigraphy. He discerned subtle colours; his fingertips

sensed minute textural differences. His students were mesmerised by the way

that he talked to long columns of strata and how such monologues clarified

his thoughts. He saw in ‘carbonised partings’ (black stringers of burnt organic

material), a promise of geophyte exploitation implying that early hunter-

gatherers farmed with fire.

As these preliminary remarks indicate, Hilary Deacon, the father of

multidisciplinary archaeology in South Africa, who died on 25 May 2010, was

a superb excavator and field researcher who could read the landscape and

identify with earth, rocks and the rich fynbos vegetation of the Cape; he

sought relationships between these and the hunter-gatherers for whom they

were once important. He excavated many Cape sites. From the Later Stone

Age, there were Scott’s Cave, Wilton Large Rock Shelter, Melkhoutboom

Cave, Springs Rock Shelter and Matjes River Shelter. Sites with both Later

Stone Age and Middle Stone Age occupations included Highlands Rock

Shelter, Kangkara Cave, Paardeberg Cave, Boomplaas Cave A and B, and

Klasies Main site. He excavated Howiesons Poort Shelter, the type-site for the



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Middle Stone Age industry that has fascinated archaeologists more than any

other and also dug the Earlier Stone Age sites of Amanzi Springs, Doornlaagte

Pan (with Revil Mason) and Elandsfontein (Hopefield). All of these

excavations were undertaken using the most advanced methods of the time,

some of them innovations of Hilary’s making. His research projects were

undertaken, first, from the Albany Museum in Grahamstown, where he

became a Professional Officer (Archaeology) in 1963 and then Deputy

Director and, secondly, from the University of Stellenbosch, where he was

appointed Senior Lecturer in Archaeology in 1971 and subsequently Professor

of Archaeology in 1979.

In his role as mentor, Hilary’s work ethic motivated students and inspired them

to be productive. With their interests always foremost, he encouraged them

to develop skills that would make them sought after by employers when they

left the nurturing lecture halls of Stellenbosch. He also taught the value of

assembling multi-stranded evidence for resolving archaeological

problems.Hewas the first archaeologist in South Africa to set up facilities for

studying charcoal from ancient firewood, seeds and geophytes, so that past

vegetation communities could be identified, and he also instigated research

into the palaeoecology of the fynbos. His palaeobotanical research was

instrumental in demonstrating dramatic environmental change in the Cape

during shifts between marine isotope stages, but he also explored additional

avenues of environmental research, including isotope analysis, sea-level

changes and geoarchaeology. Some of Hilary’s students were encouraged

to study micromammals, macrofauna, or the taphonomy of bone. Others

researched lithic technology, use-wear analysis or spatial patterning

because, in his later years, Hilary became increasingly fascinated by the

behavioural implications of his research. His work on cannibalism at Klasies

continues to fascinate scholars world-wide. He was deeply committed to

training South Africans to study and preserve South Africa’s heritage and

devised a succession plan that involved passing the trowel to his younger

team members when he was no longer able to work in the field. His PhD

graduates are Margaret Avery, James Brink, Simon Hall, Hermanus Opperman

and Sarah Wurz. Other practising archaeologists who benefited from his

mentorship at Stellenbosch include Johan Binneman, Jaco Boshoff, Vera

Geleijnse, Lynn Harris, Zoe¨ Henderson, Zenobia Jacobs, Mary Leslie, Peter

Mitchell, Frans Prins, Renee Rust, Catherine Snel, Joane´ Swart, Madelon

Tusenius, Liezel van Pletzen, Nick Walker and Lita Webley. Hilary’s programme

of skills development also extended beyond students to technicians at the

university, for example Booi Adams who, sadly, predeceased Hilary in 2008.

Hilary’s influence was felt overseas as much as at home. He was frequently

invited to give prestigious lectures or conference papers, and to accept

visiting teaching or research positions abroad. In 1978 he was Visiting

Professor at the University of Chicago, in 1984 Visiting Fellow at the Australian



71

National University, and in 1986 a Visiting Lecturer at the University of

California-Berkeley.

His enthusiasm and lively participation during an extended post-conference

excursion in Kenya and Ethiopia, 2005, made patent his long-standing

attachment to East Africa where he had worked as a field geologist from

1956 to 1961. This position was appropriate because he majored in geology

as well as archaeology for his BSc, obtained from the University of Cape Town

in 1955. Although Hilary’s MA and PhD degrees (awarded by the University of

Cape Town in 1966 and 1974, respectively) were archaeological, his earlier

geological training shaped the way that he thought and the way that he

conducted all his fieldwork and analyses.

Following his retirement in 1999, Hilary directed cultural resource

management projects, continued to write journal papers and chapters for

books, and as a Council member advised the Iziko Museum in Cape Town on

archaeological issues. He exchanged his sharp trowel and firm brush for other

earth-working tools that produced prolific, succulent vegetables. Radiant,

red tomatoes dried in the sun and waited to be packed in bags like the ones

formerly used for segments from Klasies. A researcher to the end, and always

in tune with the land, he investigated indigenous plants beloved by Cape

dwarf chameleons, and grew them so that these curious creatures made his

garden their home.

Janette, Hilary’s wife since 1962, is a gifted archaeologist and researcher in

her own right and the two made a formidable team in their joint publications.

Janette, Andrew, Harriet and Melissa have lost a remarkable husband and

father. Those who knew him professionally will miss his innovative thinking, but

his vibrant life continues through his writing, which includes two books and

over 100 scientific papers.

Lyn Wadley

Institute for Human Evolution and School of Geography,

Archaeology and Environmental Studies,

University of the Witwatersrand, PO Wits 2050, South Africa

Email: [email protected]

_________________________________________


SASQUA 2012 - IN MEMORIAM OF TIMOTHY COOPER PARTRIDGE


72

IN MEMORIAM

TIMOTHY COOPER PARTRIDGE

1942 –2009

The untimely and sudden death of Professor Timothy Cooper Partridge on 8th

December 2009 has robbed the community of geomorphologists,

geographers, palaeoclimatologists, palaeontologists and archaeologists of a

distinguished scholar and leader in his fields.

Regarded as the leading geomorphologist in South Africa, Partridge’s agile

mind and his work ventured far beyond southern Africa. In the international

scientific arena, his contributions to Quaternary geology were recognised by

his election in 1999 as senior Vice-President of the International Union for

Quaternary Research (INQUA).

Timothy Cooper Partridge was born in Pretoria, South Africa, on 7th

December 1942. His father A. Cooper Partridge was an English scholar who

held the chair of English at the Witwatersrand University from 1954. His

mother, Isabelle Mary Partridge, enjoyed a career in landscape design. In

1959, Tim Partridge matriculated from Parktown Boys’ High School,

Johannesburg, with four distinctions.

After his initial graduation from the University of the Witwatersrand, he

pursued graduate studies at the University of Natal (now the University of



73

KwaZulu Natal) under the eminent geomorphologist Professor Lester King.

Among King’s well-known works, he had studied the geomorphology of the

South African Australopithecus-bearing dolomitic limestone caves. This must

have played a part in determining at least one of Partridge’s research

directions, for he spent some forty years of his life elucidating the geology,

stratigraphy and geomorphology of these cave deposits.

He served on the lecturing staff of the Department of Geography at the

Witwatersrand University from 1965. For several years he was a research

officer in geotechnics with the South African Council for Scientific and

Industrial Research. He was Chief Engineering Geologist to Loxton, Hunting

and Associates, before setting up his own consultancy, T.C. Partridge and

Associates (later Partridge, De Villiers and Associates; and still later Partridge,

Maud and Associates). He headed this consultancy for more than a quarter

of a century and it produced over five hundred professional reports in

engineering geology, pedology, hydrogeology and photogeology. The

specialist activities included the geotechnical classification of land for

housing and industrial development, the exploitation of groundwater

resources for rural development, site evaluation for large dams. He was a

photogeologist of international repute. Using aerial photographs, and other

remote sensing imagery, he mapped and analysed some 600,000 square

kilometres in Western Australia and the Australian Northern Territory. Nearer

home, he made similar surveys covering some 100,000 square kilometres in

South Africa, as well as substantial areas of Botswana and Angola.

In his deep interest in the processes that gave rise to the unique landforms of

Africa, with its elevated interior plateaux, lengthy marginal escarpments and

the eastern Rift Valley, Partridge followed in the footsteps of two eminent

geomorphologists of the 1940s and 1950s, Sir Frank Dixey and Lester King, but

there was a difference. Whereas the findings of these early pioneers were

largely limited to the recognition of flights of planation surfaces and the

inferences from them of successive tectonic uplifts, Partridge systematically

mapped the distribution of these erosional remnants and assessed the

deformations which they had experienced since their creation, as well as the

timing of both warping and uplift events. This was achieved through wide-

ranging field-work, as well as through his interpretation of remote sensing

imagery, in which he was highly skilled.

Partridge paid especial attention to the timing and magnitude of tectonic

movements in the East African Rift System. A major motivation for this focus

was the fundamental importance which these movements have had in

providing the ecological backdrop and environmental stimuli that materially

influenced the evolutionary pathways along which the genus, Homo,

evolved from early hominid progenitors. He claimed that much of the vertical

uplift of up to 2000 metres, that had given rise to the elevated plateaux of

eastern and southern Africa, was relatively recent, namely post-Miocene. This



74

claim placed Partridge at loggerheads with a cohort of international

colleagues, who repeatedly denied the possibility of geologically recent

continental uplifts in passive marginal settings. However, in his Alex du Toit

Memorial Lecture of 1997, Partridge gathered together and consolidated the

evidence delimiting the timing of these movements. He sought to link them to

the distribution of deep-seated thermal anomalies in the Earth’s mantle (the

“African Superplume”) revealed by the burgeoning science of seismic

tomography.

In defending over more than ten years, in the face of widespread

international opposition, his assertion that large-scale uplift of major areas in

Africa had occurred during the Neogene, and through his subsequent

vindication, on the basis of his own and of independent evidence, Partridge

belonged in a small coterie of scientists who were responsible for what has

been called “premature discoveries” (G.S. Stent, 1971, 1972; P.V. Tobias, 1992,

1996). The validity of their hypotheses and paradigms was, in each case,

acknowledged by the scientific world only much later. As examples,

Raymond Dart’s claim in 1925 that the Taung child represented a creature

transitional to humankind was accepted only 25 years later; the pivotal rôle

played by Homo habilis, that L.S.B. Leakey and his colleagues proclaimed in

1964, took close on twenty years to gain wide acceptance; whilst Alex du

Toit’s evidence encapsulated in Our Wandering Continents (1937), following

the work of F.B. Taylor (1910), and A. Wegener (1912), was resuscitated and

supported not before the 1960s when the scientific basis of plate tectonics

was established. Partridge’s claims for the relative recency of uplift in Africa

should perhaps be seen as another example of a premature discovery!

Partridge tenaciously maintained his position on the importance of

neotectonics, until opposition crumbled in the face of overwhelming

evidence. His scientific input seems to have revolutionised conventional

wisdom on the geomorphic history of a large part of this continent.

The hominid-bearing cave and tufa deposits of South Africa have, since 1924,

produced more early hominid specimens than any other area of the world.

However, despite their large number and undeniable importance for an

understanding of human origins, these finds have, until recently, been

somewhat eclipsed by those from the Rift Valley of East Africa. This was owing

in part to the impact of the academic boycott on South African science and

scientists, and in part to the fact that, with few exceptions, the Rift Valley

deposits were securely dated, in contradistinction with the dolomitic cave

deposits of South Africa. In the 1960s, Partridge became consultant to R.A.

Dart. In the l970s he was appointed Honorary Research Associate attached

to the author’s Palaeo-anthropological Research Unit at the University of the

Witwatersrand, and he occupied a similar position in the Sterkfontein

Research Unit since its inception. These two research organisations recovered

more than six hundred specimens of early hominid fossils since 1966. Partridge



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was early confronted by the difficulties of dating the South African cave-sites.

Yet he knew that it was crucial to place these hominid fossils, and the

contemporaneous fauna, in the correct stratigraphic and chronological

sequence.

He played a major, and internationally recognised, role in remedying this

deficiency by placing the finds from almost all of the major South African sites

within a detailed stratigraphic context, thus providing a framework for fixing

the provenance of both hominid and other fossils and a basis for establishing

comparative palaeontological age ranges. In addition, he determined which

materials within the deposits retained an unambiguous palaeomagnetic

signal and helped to derive magnetostratigraphies for the important

Sterkfontein and Makapansgat sites. Most recently, he headed the team that

provided the first absolute dates for major new finds at Sterkfontein, using

cosmogenic nuclides.

Tim Partridge made seminal contributions by systematically placing these

uniquely important finds within stratigraphic, palaeo-environmental and

geochronological frameworks.

In this virtually lifelong endeavour, the successive breakthroughs that

Partridge achieved or catalysed made a fundamental contribution to the

placement of the early South African hominids in time, and thus to the

establishment of phylogenies linking them to their East African counterparts.

Equally important was his work on the depositional environments and

sedimentologies of these deposits, which, together with evidence gleaned

from the species composition of the faunas, plant remains and the stable

light isotopes present in tooth enamel, permitted the reconstruction of

palaeo-environmental conditions at the times when the deposits were

formed. To this evidence Partridge added that derived from the

reconstruction of uplift histories for the interior plateaux of South and East

Africa. As he observed in several publications, these uplifts were of sufficient

amplitude to have had major impacts on African environments during some

intervals when species turnover was rapid among animals including hominids.

These findings were important, too, for an understanding of the

circumstances underlying significant changes in hominid demography (for

example, the author’s demonstration of the way in which more hostile

physical environments altered life expectancy within South African hominid

populations).

Partridge’s seminal research encompassed most of the important South

African sites, including Sterkfontein, Makapansgat, Kromdraai and Taung. He

was instrumental in providing a date (based on magnetostratigraphy) for

what is arguably the most important hominid specimen yet discovered in

South Africa, the 3.3 million year old virtually complete skeleton from

Sterkfontein, Stw 573, which is presently being exhumed by R.J. Clarke and



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co-workers. The recently announced 26Al/¹ºBe dates, confirming the age of

this specimen and of other early hominid remains from Sterkfontein, owe

much to Partridge’s input, particularly the three-dimensional stratigraphy that

he established for this site, which permitted sampling in parallel sections.

Since the mid-1980s Tim Partridge has been deeply immersed in research on

Quaternary palaeoclimates. The rapidly increasing importance of his

contributions in this field was acknowledged when he was appointed to the

Scientific Steering Committee of the PAGES (Past Global Changes) Core

Project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme in 1989.

Partridge’s contributions to the deliberations of this influential committee over

six years were significant, especially in decisions on the scientific strategy for

the analysis of the PAGES third Pole-Equator-Pole transect through Europe

and Africa. A book synthesising the results of this work, entitled Past Climate

Variability through Europe and Africa, included an important review of

southern Africa by Partridge and co-workers.

In 1992 Partridge was appointed leader of the Palaeoclimates of the

Southern Hemisphere (PASH) project of INQUA (International Union of

Quaternary Research). In this some 300 scientists from south of the equator

participated over 10 years. The resulting dedicated double volume of the

journal Quaternary International appeared under his editorship.

Arguably the single most important palaeoclimate project initiated by

Partridge has been an investigation of the long terrestrial record contained

within the sedimentary infilling of the Tswaing impact crater (previously the

Pretoria Saltpan). Drilling of the crater began under Partridge’s direction in

1988, and by 1989 a lacustrine sequence 90 metres thick had been cored

and the impact origin of the crater confirmed. Further analysis showed the

sediments to span the past 200 000 years. Apart from important chemical,

mineralogical and biological evidence preserved in this sequence, the

sediments themselves have yielded one of the best proxy rainfall records from

anywhere within the world’s mid-latitudes. The transfer function that gave rise

to this record was based on granulometry, with calibration from soils sampled

along a transect spanning the full range of present southern African climates.

No similar quantitative tool had been developed previously. This unique

contribution is widely accepted as an important aid in palaeoclimatic

reconstruction.

From this record Partridge was able to show that, when insolational forcing

due to precessional changes in the earth’s orbit was strong, rainfall

fluctuations occurred at precessional frequency (23 000 years). When the

insolational signal weakened, changes associated with variations in the

intensity of the oceanic thermohaline circulation around southern Africa, and

in the extent of the circum-Antarctic atmospheric vortex, became dominant.



77

This highly significant finding is contributing materially to an understanding of

the global climate system in the tropics and sub-tropics.

Even more arresting in its vision and implications was Partridge’s proposition,

announced during a conference in Aix-en-Provence in August 2001. This was

based on careful analysis of significant leads and lags in the onset of climatic

changes during the Last Glacial Period, observed in Antarctica, in the

Kalahari (where they were signalled by the beginning of periods of dune

mobility, defined by series of luminescence dates), and in oceanic records

from the North Atlantic. He interpreted these substantial and consistent

discrepancies as indicating that major climatic events during the Last Glacial

were forced from the high latitudes of the southern hemisphere. In particular,

he argued that Heinrich Events, associated with massive discharges of

icebergs from the ice-sheets fringing the North Atlantic, which repeatedly

stalled the oceanic circulation that drives the Gulf Stream, were initiated by

an increase in the range and intensity of moisture-bearing winds blowing

northwards across the equator. These large-scale changes in atmospheric

circulation, in his view, caused the rapid enlargement and ultimate collapse

of extensive segments of the northern ice-sheets.

This highly original interpretation is not without its critics, but if correct, as

growing evidence appears to indicate, it needs to be taken into account by

analysts concerned with scenarios of future climate change in a greenhouse

world. Natural changes triggered from the southern hemisphere, particularly

those causing variations in oceanic heat transfer, may critically and

unexpectedly alter the course of events predicted from modelling

experiments based on current paradigms of global atmospheric circulation

and the progressive build-up of greenhouse gases. Partridge’s proposition

that the Antarctic plays a more important role in climatic change than has

been acknowledged hitherto is being echoed by others and may yet help to

promote a switch of regional focus in the study of global climate change.

Tim Partridge was an earth scientist whose extensive research output over 38

years bore testimony to a broad range of skills. His principal focus was on the

recent geological past and his area of interest was Africa, particularly the

region south of the equator. His reputation among earth scientists with

research interests in this area is unrivalled. But his standing as a scientist of

exceptional originality extended far beyond Africa’s shores and stemmed

from major inputs to several fields of geology. His contributions to an

understanding of the geological setting within which our earliest ancestors

evolved are admired worldwide – indeed such is his reputation in this field

that he was invited to present the opening public address at a conference of

the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on The Origin of Humankind and the

Environment in May 2000. The placement of the world’s most important

assemblage of early hominid fossils – that from South Africa – within an

increasingly precise chronological framework is largely the result of his efforts,



78

and culminated in his announcement early in the new millennium, of the first

absolute dates for specimens from Sterkfontein.

Partridge’s contributions to an understanding of the mechanisms underlying

the evolution of passive continental margins, and of palaeoclimatic

processes that have impacted the African continent, and, in some cases,

sent ripples across the globe, are well known within the relevant international

communities and were acknowledged by his election to high office within

international and national scientific bodies.

Among the honours that have been accorded to Tim Partridge are

fellowships of the South African Geographical Society (1980), the S.A. Institute

of Engineering Geologists (1994) and the Royal Society of South Africa (1995).

His achievements have further been recognised through the award in 2001 of

the Fellowship of the Geological Society of South Africa, and the award of

the Geological Society’s Jubilee Medal in 1989, which he shared with Dr

Rodney R. Maud, for an article entitled Geomorphic Evolution of Southern

Africa since the Mesozoic. In 1997, Partridge was elected as the 25th Alex L.

du Toit Memorial Lecturer. This prestige-laden eponymous lecture is delivered

and published under the auspices of the S.A. Geographical Society, the

Royal Society of South Africa, the Geological Society of S.A., and the S.A.

Association for the Advancement of Science. Partridge was elected an

honorary member of the Southern African Society for Quaternary Research in

2001.

The institution to which he was attached for most of his professional life, the

University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, recognised his academic

achievements by making him Honorary Professor of Physical Geography in

1983 and ad hominem Professor of Cainozoic and Engineering Geology in

1987.

His greatest gift lay in his ability to grasp the broad picture without

compromising attention to detail or the application of conceptual models of

the highest sophistication. He was always mindful of the importance of good

field evidence and was quickly able, through his highly developed synoptic

skills, to comprehend its implications in the regional or even global context.

This stamped him as a world leader in geology, remarkable for the depth and

breadth of his vision in an age of increasingly narrow specialisation.

Tim Partridge at various times held many national and international positions.

These included chairmanship of the Cainozoic Task Group of the S.A.

Committee on Stratigraphy and of the S.A. National Committee for INQUA.

He was President of the Institute for the Study of Mankind in Africa and of the

Southern African Society for Quaternary Research. He was leader of the

Palaeoclimates of the Southern Hemisphere Project of INQUA, and co-leader

of the Pilot Project on Climates of the Past of UNESCO and the International



79

Union of Geological Sciences. As part of the INQUA Commission on

Stratigraphy, he chaired the Working Group on the Plio-Pleistocene

Boundary. Seriously topical today, he led the project on Long-term Climatic

Change of the Foundation for Research Development Special Programme

on Southern African Climatic Change. Likewise he led the FRD Special

Programme on Palaeoclimates of Southern Africa during the Quaternary. He

was a member of the Board of Control of the Bernard Price Institute for

Palaeontological Research of the Witwatersrand University.

It would be quite wrong to leave readers of the Journal with the impression

that Tim Partridge was purely a scientist’s scientist. He loved life, sparkled at

dinner parties – or around a camp-fire -, could expound knowledgably and

often passionately on music, history, art and photography, people, wine and

food. He loved travel and he loved people. His gentle and kindly manner, his

human skills, made it a joy to work with him, to savour his breadth of

experience, his originality of mind and his love of literature and language,

and to enjoy his friendship.

He married Marilyn Phillips, a medical practitioner and specialist anaesthetist,

in 1973 and they spent 31 years happily and creatively complementing each

other’s careers. Tim was predeceased by Marilyn and by their son, Astley. Tim

Partridge was married to Susan Jordan on 26th September 2009. Less than

three months later, they were putting the finishing touches to a book, Caves

of the Ape-men. He turned 67 on Monday, 7th December 2009: a day later,

while working on the book with his long-time devoted assistant, Mrs Pat Moon,

he was smitten with a severe heart attack and died within minutes. So the last

of his books will perforce appear posthumously. This book and his other 150

published works will help to keep Tim Partridge’s memory green.

Phillip V. Tobias FRS, FRSSAf

Institute for Human Evolution

School of Anatomical Sciences

University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

25th January 2010

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SASQUA 2012 - IN MEMORIAM OF JOHANN CARL VOGEL


80

IN MEMORIAM

JOHANN CARL VOGEL

1932 –2012

At the beginning of 2012, the Quaternary community lost one of their most

gifted scientists who had contributed to both geochronology and the study

of stable isotopes.

John Vogel was born in Pretoria and studied at the University of Pretoria, first

obtaining a BSc and then an MSc in chemistry in 1955. He then moved to the

University of Heidelberg, Germany, where he constructed a mass

spectrometer for measuring the isotopes of carbon and oxygen. He obtained

his doctorate in 1959 with a thesis on the determination of fractionation

factors of the carbon isotopes. During this time he became interested in the

newly developing method of radiocarbon dating, and was immediately

aware of its potential ability to solve problems in archaeology and

environmental studies.

In 1961 John was appointed to head the radiocarbon dating laboratory in

the physics department at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Here

he also introduced a stable isotope facility that was used for studies of

groundwater, rain water and marine shells; this laboratory enabled him to

continue his interest in establishing fractionation factors, the cornerstones of

understanding natural stable isotope variations. The radiocarbon date lists

between 1963 and 1972 include ages from important Palaeolithic sites in

Europe, which still underpin the current chronology for the first appearance of

Homo sapiens in Europe, and also ages for interstadial sites in Europe, which

helped understand the Quaternary deposits from before the last glacial

maximum. He used data from tree rings to show that radiocarbon ages in the

southern hemisphere appeared to be many years older than in the northern

hemisphere and produced a model to explain the offset. In 1967, he was

appointed to a personal chair in isotope geology, and from then until 1973 he

combined this position with his appointment as head of a new radiocarbon

and stable isotope laboratory at the CSIR in Pretoria. Here he continued

groundwater and palaeoenvironmental studies, matching this information

with isotope data from caves and to build a picture of past climates. In these

investigations, he worked closely with Quaternary geologists and

environmental scientists in South Africa, and around the world.

However, John’s main interest was in using radiocarbon dating to construct a

time-frame for archaeological sites in South Africa. He worked together with

the archaeologists, visiting their sites to collect samples and join in the

interpretation of the results and in 1972 he published a paper on the revised

SASQUA 2012 - IN MEMORIAM OF JOHANN CARL VOGEL


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radiocarbon chronology for the Stone Age in South Africa. He also saw the

role of isotope measurements not just as means of looking at past climates

but also for studying past diets as carbon, oxygen and nitrogen isotope

records were passed on from plants to animals through the food chain.

Starting from his first endeavours with 14C in atmospheric carbon dioxide,

John continued his interest in calibration of radiocarbon ages into reliable

dates. He meticulously maintained his three 14C counters in Pretoria for thirty

years and consistently produced high-precision, low-background 14C results.

He was part of the international effort to produce a standardised

radiocarbon calibration curve, giving special attention to the features where

the southern hemisphere differs from the northern. Through the extension of

the calibration curve to beyond the range offered by old tree-rings, he

became interested in other methods, such as uranium series and

luminescence dating.

By the time that he retired as head of QUADRU (Quaternary Dating Research

Unit, CSIR) in 1997, John had published 212 papers in a wide range of

international and national journals, where they have remained highly cited.

After his retirement, he continued to write and a further 20 papers appeared,

with the latest in 2008.

His contributions to physics and archaeology have been recognised by a

number of awards, of which he was immensely proud. He received the CSIR

Merit award in 1986, the de Beers Gold Medal from the South African Institute

of Physics in 1988, a medal of honour from the South African Academy of Arts

and Science in 1988 and a Certificate of Merit from the Southern African

Association for the Advancement of Science in 2002. In 1998 he was

awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Cape Town. He was a

Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa and an honorary member of the

Southern Africa Society for Quaternary Studies, the Association of Southern

African Professional Archaeologists and the International Union for

Quaternary Research. In 2009 he received an honorary medal from the

Association of South African Professional Archaeologists.

John was a very private man, who sheltered behind an often prickly exterior.

He dedicated his life to his science and had many original ideas which he

would fiercely defend. However, those who got to know him and

subsequently worked with him, felt privileged to have had the opportunity of

being exposed to his breadth of knowledge and deep understanding of the

physical processes behind the methods that he employed to build the bigger

pictures in archaeology and Quaternary science.

Ann Wintle, Cambridge, UK

Greg Botha, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

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