Diepkloof Eggshell Engravings

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CONTENTS

• Prehistoric Art at Diepkloof
• Location & Excavation
• The Diepkloof Engravings
• A Form of Graphic Messaging
• Modern Man Did Not Invent Art
• References

Prehistoric Art at Diepkloof

Diepkloof rock shelter is a Stone Age cave located in Western Cape, South Africa, which has some of the oldest art made by modern man in Africa.

Archaeologists working on the site, from the University of Cape Town and the Institute of Prehistory and Quaternary Geology at the University of Bordeaux, discovered a number of ancient engravings on Ostrich eggshells, dating back to 60,000 BC.

The Diepkloof engravings reinforce the significance of other paleolithic caves in Africa, such as the Klasies River Caves (100,000-85,000 BC), and the Blombos Cave (71,000 BC), which also contain crosshatch engravings.

Judging by the finds made at Diepkloof and Blombos as well as other paleolithic sites at Klasies River and Wonderwerk - there may have been a tradition of abstract patterns in South Africa around the same time as Neanderthals were creating cave art in Europe.

To understand how the Diepkloof engravings fit into the general development of paleolithic art, see: Prehistoric Art Timeline (from 540,000 BC).

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Location & Excavation

The cave is situated some 16 kilometres from the Atlantic coastline near Elands Bay about 145 kilometres north of Cape Town.

Set in a steep-sided hill overlooking the Verlorenvlei River, the shelter is roughly 25 metres wide and 15 metres deep.

It was first excavated in 1973 by archaeologists Cedric Poggenpoel and John Parkington. Work continues under a combined team from Bordeaux and Cape Town.

According to a 2010 report, written by Poggenpoel, Parkington and others (see references, below), the site contains "one of the most complete and continuous later Middle Stone Age (MSA) sequences in southern Africa, dating from 130,000 BC to about 43,000 BC".

Human occupation at Diepkloof spans almost the complete range of Middle Paleolithic tool cultures associated with anatomically modern humans, including the pre-Stillbay, Stillbay, Howiesons Poort, and post-Howiesons Poort lithic technologies.

For another site with a similar range of artifacts, and the oldest animal paintings in Africa, see: Apollo 11 Cave Stones (25,500 BC).

The Diepkloof Engravings

As well as tools and other artifacts, archaeologists recovered 270 small fragments from an estimated 25 ostrich eggs, dating to between 55,000 and 65,000 BC.

The eggshells were engraved with various geometric motifs - mainly crosshatch signs - similar to the style of prehistoric art found on pieces of red ochre in caves at Blombos, Klasies River, Wonderwerk and Klein Kliphuis.

Interestingly, fragments of ostrich eggshells were found dating to the entire period (130,000-43,000 BC), but engravings were found only on those from the Howiesons Poort period (60,000-55,000 BC).

See: Oldest Art in Africa.

A Form of Graphic Messaging

The engraved eggshells should not be seen as mobiliary art, since they were almost certainly used as water storage containers. Stone Age hunter-gatherers in the region are known to have employed them for this purpose, and some still do.

It's more likely that the engravings were a form of messaging - a type of graphic communication intended to indicate details of ownership and content.

The large quantity of engraved shell fragments gave researchers an insight into what patterns of decorative art were allowed, although patterns varied over time.

Cross-hatching was all the rage during the first 12 layers, before being superceded by parallel line motifs.

The Diepkloof engravings show that modern humans were fully capable of symbolic abstract thought, and well accustomed to using pictographs and other graphics, to customize everyday items, as desired.

Modern Man Did Not Invent Art

Although the engravings at Blombos and Diepkloof show that modern man was quite capable of producing a rudimentary form of paleolithic art, evidence from sites in Europe shows that Neanderthals - were creating similar art long before modern humans arrived.

See, for instance, the Krapina Eagle Claw Jewellery (130,000 BC), and the Los Aviones Cave Jewellery (113,000 BC), as well as the Maltravieso Cave Hand Stencils (64,700 BC), the Ardales Cave Red Lines (63,000 BC) and the abstract signs in the Cave of La Pasiega (62,000 BC).

This means that H. neanderthalensis must have learned from an even earlier ancestor, common to both them and H. sapiens.

The unique contribution of modern humans in Europe, was to introduce figurative cave painting and engraving, during the era of Upper Paleolithic art (40,000-10,000 BC).

References

(1) Parkington, J., Poggenpoel, C. (1987). "Diepkloof Rock Shelter". In: Parkington, J., Hall, M. (Eds.), Papers in Prehistory of the Western Cape, South Africa, vol. 332. BAR International, pp. 269–293.
(2)"A Howiesons Poort tradition of engraving ostrich eggshell containers dated to 60,000 years ago at Diepkloof Rock Shelter, South Africa". Texier, PJ; Porraz, G; Parkington, J; Rigaud, JP; Poggenpoel, C; Miller, C; Tribolo, C; Cartwright, C; Coudenneau, A; Klein, R; Steele, T; Verna, C (2010). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107 (14): 6180–6185.