Heritage Cases

I am proposing to send a total of 11 faunal fragment samples excavated from Ga-Mohana Hill North Rockshelter for ZooMS analysis. In situ Middle and Late Stone Age deposits were discovered during test excavations at Ga-Mohana Hill which began in August 2016 under the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) permit ID 2194. These excavations at Ga-Mohana Hill are significant because they set the foundation for establishing a regional diachronic study of Pleistocene hunter-gatherer adaptation in the southern Kalahari Basin. Also, they expand the domain of archaeological excavations in the Kalahari Basin and permit us to further test hypotheses about the origins of early Homo sapiens. A final report on the 3-year permit was submitted to SAHRA in February 2019. In the largest of our excavation areas (Area A) at Ga-Mohana Hill North Rockshelter (GHN), we identified 4 Stratigraphic Aggregates. From top to bottom: Surface sediments and dung (Surface), Dark Brown Gravelly Silt (DBGS), Orange Ashy Silt (OAS), and Dark Brown Silt and Roofspall (DBSR). LSA-type artifacts (backed pieces, bladelets, small scrapers) occur in the Surface and DBGS. MSA-type artifacts (points, blades, Levallois cores) occur in the OAS and DBSR. Recently, we received preliminary OSL age estimates of ~15 ka for the DBGS, ~31 ka for the OAS, and ~105 ka for the DBSR. I would like to sample a very small proportion of the plotted faunal material for ZooMS analysis (11 out of 822 plotted faunal finds). ZooArchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) uses collagen as a molecular barcode to read the identity of bones. The method relies on peptide mass fingerprinting and Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry. Bones are identified by differences in the mass of the peptides which arise as a result of sequence differences between species and genera (Buckley, et al. 2009). This is a destructive but valuable process that will provide important details about the faunal assemblage, with potential to aid in understanding palaeoenvironmental context and early human hunting behaviors. ZooMS will especially be helpful at GHN, because the assemblage is fragmented with very few identifiable elements based on morphology alone. The main purpose of this initial study is to establish feasibility and determine for which Stratigraphic Aggregates it will work, if any. Analyses will be carried out at The University of Copenhagen by Dr. Ashley Coutu, via a collaborative lab arrangement with Prof. Matthew Collins. This work is also in collaboration with Dr. Benjamin Collins (University of Manitoba), who selected the appropriate samples. For ZooMS, on average approximately 10-20 mg of material is sampled from the fragment. The protocol is to first take a sub-sample, and then run it through a protein quantifier which allows us to determine how much protein is in the sample. If there is very low protein, we will take the whole sample for extraction. If there are high amounts of protein, then we will just take a sub-sample and keep the remaining sample until publication in case anything needs to be re-analyzed. Any remainder of sampled fragments will be returned after analysis and publication to be curated with the remainder of the assemblage. We have selected two samples from DBGS, three from the OAS, and six from the DBSR. Further details and photos are provided in the attached appendix. To maximize the reliability of their provenience, we’ve decided to limit our samples to finds that had been plotted with the total station, rather than recovered from the sieve.