Heritage Cases

This is an application for mitigation permit for a circa 1950s midden intercepted during fibre-optic trenching for Frogfoot Networks in Kimberley at the corner of Hercules Street and Aristotle Avenue, Belgravia to Cassandra Link. The Frogfoot project is defined in Case ID: 16396. On 29 April 2022 trenching for fibre-optic installation by Frogfoot Networks intercepted broken glass bottles, porcelain, metal, bone and other materials. The incident was reported to SAHRA and Christine Havenga and Associates. It was determined that mitigation was required and hence a mitigation permit is being applied for. Location The section of trench intersectiong the midden is 51 m long and 30 cm wide, and situated alongside a short section of service road at the corner of Hercules Street and Aristotle Avenue, within the MR905/R64 Class 3 provincial-urban road servitude. A small sample of the midden material retrieved by workers from heaps alongside the trench includes broken glass colddrink and medicine bottles, part of a bayonet light bulb, bone (butchered beef, mutton, chicken), and rusted metal. The glass colddrink bottles are ‘Sullivans’ (a local producer) and of a form that can be dated approximately to the 1950s, consistent also with the other bottles and objects found. The midden is hence clearly not an early Kimberley ashheap (such as have been found and documented elsewhere in the city). Significance and mitigation proposal The significance of the material is not considered to be high, and it is not judged to be of such importance that major mitigation work is needed. Determining the full extent of the midden is not thought to be justified (test excavations would need to be undertaken in private household gardens [Erfs 3720, 3716 & 2992] on the one side and in busy roads [including the MR905/R64 Class 3 provincial-urban road, Aristotle Ave] on the other). It is proposed as sufficient to systematically screen all the material displaced by the trench, documenting sections in the trench, and determining any possible spatial variability of midden content along the length of the trench in question, with analysis of the material at the museum against other museum comparative assemblages.