Heritage Cases

This application requests permission for the export of faunal material from Nelson Bay Cave and Byneskranskop 1, currently housed in the archaeological collections of Iziko National Museum. This project is for the purpose of AMS radiocarbon dating at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, University of Oxford. Re-dating of the deposits will enable a better understanding of the timing of the cultural and environmental shifts evident in these sites. Both Nelson Bay Cave and Byneskranskop 1 have long sequences spanning the Later Stone Age and play a substantial role in reconstructions of south coast Holocene and Late Pleistocene marine and terrestrial environments, with several research projects on-going at the two sites. Nelson Bay Cave in particular contains a defining sequence for the Later Stone Age (LSA) lithic industries of the southern Cape, and has greatly impacted interpretations of southern African hunter-gatherer archaeology. However, the chronologies of both sites, developed during the 1970s and 1980s, have significant gaps and shortcomings that cast doubt on the exact timing of events and their correspondence with events occurring elsewhere in southern Africa. Given the importance of Nelson Bay Cave (NBC) and Byneskranskop 1 (BNK1) for regional understandings of LSA archaeology and environments, secure chronologies are essential for future research of the sites.