Sites

Blydefontein Rock Shelter (see Bousman 2005). Long series of interlinking rock shelters spanning 50 m along the base of the cliff. A stone wall runs across the entire front of the site. It has multiple components as follows (refer to diagram in appendix): A: Square stone enclosure inside the shelter with a pit inside it. This looks to be the excavation – a vertical section is visible in one place. B: Dense hornfels scatter in the dripline of the shelter. C: Painted grafitti: “J.L. lob3sehagnit.” D: Large Khoekhoen rock art panel with numerous vertical finger smears, circles, U-shapes, grids and other markings all in red. Grafitti reads: “E.M. Hart 31.3.1936”, “24.1.05” and lots of scratched marks (some over the art). 
E: Small, faded panel of Khoekhoen rock art made with finger smears in red. F: Some faded red Khoekhoen art with bold grey painted graffiti over the top: “Jan A. Schoombie 13 Nov 1889” and “…..wederlien”. To the right is a double line of finger dots in red. G: Two panels with compositions in finger dots and smears, all in red. To their right are some more red finger dots and a horizontally elongated motif that may have been partly removed when a fragment of wall detached. Overlying the dots is painted graffiti reading: “Johanna Baspeens”, while some scratches occur above the elongated motif. In the rock scar to the right is engraved: “…T MvomByArr 111 42” (or something similar) and painted: “P. Katte” and “Van Wijnkat”. H: Lots of painted graffiti on this panel: “R.T. Benadie” (on the left), “Deetty Esterhuysen”, “9.10.05 Caledon. cc.”, “Johanna M. Schoombie”, a ‘tree-like motif, “Johanna Burger”, Jannsen P”, “James”, S…… Jansen” (scratched), “John ……” (scatched), “J Le Roux”, “RH Meintjes 1/9/1934”, “The war began in 1900 end in 1908” (the ‘8’ in this last is composed of two separate circles with one lower than the other text), “DW BENIE 11-5(or 6)-66”, “annIE V. WIJnGarD”, “H.A. WATERS 4.12.1906” and, on a higher panel, “……. Schoombie 9……..”. Also three red filled shapes and some grey (historical) paint. I: This is the deepest part of the entire shelter. On the left are some grey paint smears. There are hundreds of red finger dots spread over a width of 4 m with a finger-painted possible human on the far right. Also a group of red horizontal lines below the dots. Above the dots is graffiti: “VZ” in grey paint next to a red motif. On the roof of the shelter near the lip are to large finger dot compositions in red. One of them has a white finger smear and a white ‘cross-in-grid’ design. Part of one of the finger ot compositions and part of the ‘cross-in-grid’ have come off and is presumably buried in the deposit below.