Heritage Cases

The new excavations at Wonderwerk Cave are designed to recover a large number of geological samples with precise spatial coordinates together with complete recovery of microdebitage and microfauana through the use of a flotation machine. Our research team has place an emphasis on developing an in-field laboratory that allows us to analyze materials as the excavation proceeds. However, there are some analyses that cannot be done in the field and require export to access the instrumentation that is needed. Wherever possible we have developed collaborations with South African researchers to reduce the amount of material exported but there remain aspects of the analysis that require expertise and instrumentation that we are not able to access in South Africa. We would like to export the geological samples, microfauna, microdebitage and debitage detailed in the attached documents. The geological and microfaunal samples will be used to perform Soil Micromorphology, Infrared spectroscopy and micro-spectroscopy, Magnetic Susceptibility (MagSus) analyses at the Geoarchaeology lab of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby BC, Canada under the direction of Prof. Francesco Berna, co-director of the Wonderwerk Cave Excavation. The Simon Fraser University facility is uniquely equipped with an Infrared spectrometer, thin sectioning instrumentation, infrared and petrographic microscopes and a MagSus meter. The scope of the above mentioned analysis is to learn about site formation processes, the nature of fire and human activities in the ESA deposits of Excavation 1 at Wonderwerk cave. Intact sediment blocks will be embedded in polyester resin, hardened, and processed in petrographic thin sections. These will be analyzed by optical and Infrared microscopy and described following petrographic and soil micromorphology criteria. Representative aliquots of microfauna, rock fragments and loose sediments samples will be subsampled (mg) and destructively analyzed by infrared spectroscopy. In addition, infrared micro-spectroscopy will be used to survey not-destructively microfauna and samples processed in petrographic thin sections. The main purpose of infrared spectroscopy and micro spectroscopy is to investigate the mineralogical composition of the sediments and determine if the microfauna and the sediments have been heated above or below 500C. The microdebitage and debitage samples will be analyzed at the University of Toronto with a combination of standard microscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy to investigate traces of manufacture and possible effects of burning. All microfauna, microdebitage, and debitage will be returned to the McGregor within two years of export. A representative portion of each micromorphology block will be archived at the McGregor Museum while the thin section and the remainder of the block will be curated at Simon Fraser University to facilitate ongoing research on site formation at Wonderwerk Cave.