Heritage Cases

Mulilo Renewable Project Developments (Pty) Ltd is developing the authorised De Aar 2 South Wind Energy Facility (WEF) on a number of farms north-east of De Aar, with a grid connection to the south-west of the WEF to connect it into the national grid. The grid connection corridor was subject to an archaeological assessment in 2020, including a walkdown survey, as part of the Environmental Impact Assessment process (Gribble and Euston-Brown, 2020) (see SAHRIS Case 15647). The walkdown survey identified a number of archaeological sites and occurrences, but in most cases the material recorded was difficult to define as discrete sites and can be viewed as part of a widespread archaeological litter typically found across the Karoo landscape. One significant cluster of archaeological material was recorded and designated as site JG050-JG052 / GEB013-GEB014 in the HIA. This cluster of material has been given the site reference number CRP001 in this permit application. CRP001 consists of a dense scatter of Later Stone Age stone artefacts and manuports , possibly associated with ostrich eggshell, eroding out of the bank of a stream in the Brak River Valley on the farm Carolus Poort. The active erosive nature of this site suggests that it may retain spatial archaeological value. The HIA recommended that CRP001 be subject to archaeological mitigation. The recommendation was that exposed artefactual material on the site was subject mapping, recording and collection by an archaeologist, prior to the commencement of any activities related to the installation of the grid connection (Gribble & Euston-Brown, 2020). The recommendation was accepted by SAHRA as one of the conditions in their Final Comment on the HIA and this application is for a Section 35 permit to satisfy that condition. Because it is possible that the lithic scatter at CRP001 retains spatial information, the proposal is to map the positions of individual lithics in the areas where the scatters are most dense. Artefacts will be numbered and photographed, and their positions recorded using a total station before each artefact is collected and bagged. Survey datums will be two existing Eskom pylons located approximately 160 m west and north of the centre of the area covered by CRP001. Following the surface collection, we propose gridding and testing at least one square metre at each of the most dense clusters of lithics to ascertain whether buried lithics occur as a clear horizon in the underlying sediment in areas adjacent to the exposed lithics. The collection generated by this mitigation will be accession and curated at the MacGregor Museum in Kimberley, as per the attached repository agreement.