Diepkloof Rock Shelter

Diepkloof Rock Shelter is a cave in South Africa’s Western Cape, about 17 kilometers from the Atlantic coast near Elands Bay and 150 kilometers north of Cape Town. It sits in quartzitic sandstone on a butte, looking east over the Verlorenvlei River from a height of about 100 meters. The shelter is roughly 25 meters wide and 15 meters deep. Excavations have revealed one of the most complete and continuous Middle Stone Age sequences in southern Africa, spanning from before 130,000 BP to about 45,000 BP, and covering the Still Bay, Howiesons Poort, and post-Howiesons Poort periods. The main research trench is 16 meters across and 3.6 meters deep, with deposits of burnt and unburnt organic material, ash from hearths and dumps, and charred bedding.

First excavated in 1973 by John Parkington and Cedric Poggenpoel, the site has been studied since 1999 by the University of Cape Town’s Department of Archaeology and the University of Bordeaux’s Institute of Prehistory and Quaternary Geology. Stone tools show that bifaces and bifacial points (Still Bay industry) were used from approximately 71,000 to 77,000 years ago, while simpler backed artifacts (Howiesons Poort industry) appear from roughly 65,000 to 59,000 years ago, later replaced by unifacial points. Quartz and quartzite dominate the earliest layers, with little silcrete. Between 71,000 and 77,000 years ago, silcrete becomes more common than quartz, while quartzite remains frequent. From 65,000 to 59,000 years ago, quartz again becomes dominant, alongside quartzite.

The shelter is best known for about 270 fragments of ostrich eggshell containers engraved with geometric patterns. Most fragments are 20–30 millimeters across, though some have been fitted into pieces up to 80 by 40 millimeters. Researchers estimate these come from about 25 containers. Engraved fragments appear only in several layers of the Howiesons Poort period, across 18 stratigraphic units—especially those named Frank and Darryl—suggesting the engraving tradition lasted several thousand years. The patterns are abstract and repetitive, often a hatched band motif of lines crossed at right or oblique angles. One fragment has two parallel lines that may have run around the container. Researchers propose that by repeating this motif, early humans were trying to communicate something, perhaps expressing individual or group identity.