Beyond the drip-line: a high-resolution open-air Holocene hunter-gatherer sequence from highland Lesotho

Abstract

The activities of hunter-gatherers are often captured in rockshelters, but here the authors present a study of a riverside settlement outside one, with a rich sequence from 1300 BC to AD 800. Thanks to frequent flooding, periods of occupation were sealed and could be examined in situ. The phytolith and faunal record, especially fish, chronicle changing climate and patterns of subsistence, emphasising that the story here is no predictable one-way journey from huntergatherer to farmer. Right up to the period of the famous nineteenth-century rock paintings in the surrounding Maloti-Drakensberg region, adaptation was dynamic and historically contingent.