Heritage Cases

I recently applied for and was issued a permit (PermitID: 2879) to undertake a rescue excavation at Lwala Mine. In 2003 when the original survey was undertaken for the Heritage assessment, I had identified an Eiland site (AD 1000-1300) in the same vicinity for which the report recommended mitigation action. This entire area had been ploughed prior to the 2003 survey and most probably subsequently as well. The site originally had a dense concentration of identifiable pottery, but this is no longer observable on the surface due to the successive ploughing. From the discovery of skeletal remains for which the above mentioned rescue permit was issued, it is clear the ploughing only disturbed the top 30cm of the deposit and that intact cultural and skeletal remains may underlie the disturbance caused by the ploughing. The mining opencast pit is nearing site 33 which is now being mitigated. An area of approximately 9 100 m² was demarcated by mine staff in the previously ploughed field. Our proposed method to uncover intact archaeological material is to use a mechanical road grader in order to remove the 30cm topsoil that had been disturbed by the ploughing and then to map any features such as pits and concentrated cultural material. The second phase will be to undertake test pit excavations at selected promising features to extract data about the cultural affinity and date of the site. This is similar to the method used by G Whitelaw at Kwagandaganda in KZN.