The Faraoskop event: a significant moment in the history of foraging in the western cape, South Africa?

Abstract

Here we make the case that the interment of twelve skeletons in a small Western Cape rock shelter should be viewed as a single event. We present evidence of the partially disarticulated, clearly overlapping arrangement of human remains and the radiocarbon dating results from the individuals that point to a hasty but coordinated burial at a critical moment in the prehistory of the Cape. The moment was marked by the earliest appearance of the pastoralist lifestyle in an area previously dominated by hunting and gathering (Sadr PLoS ONE 10(8):e0134215, 2015). Because, as others show (Dlamini et al., this volume), these interments are associated with peri-mortem violence, the demonstration of contemporaneity and entanglement implies a rare occurrence of so many deaths at a time when conflict between pastoralists and hunter-gatherers in the area seems likely. In describing the circumstances of bone recovery, the positioning of body parts and the associated radiocarbon ages, we lay the platform for further micro-stratigraphic, biological, genetic and isotopic studies of the twelve individuals and some contemplation on the nature of the event.