Wits students “dig” Maropeng

April 20, 2011 – Bianca Bothma and Matt van Onselen

To see a group of archaeology students digging around the Maropeng Visitor Centre is not a common sight. Most of the time, it is at the Sterkfontein Caves, not far from Maropeng, that digs take place. But for the past three days, students from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) have been digging, scraping and brushing away the soil to uncover stone tools that date back at least 1-million years.

Wits has sent its third-year archaeology students to Maropeng to get a taste of a real excavation site, and to search for ancient stone tools. “Part of the reason why we’re digging here is to clarify why these stone tools are here,” explains PhD student Dominic Stratford, who is supervising the dig.

The site is ideal for the students to work on, as it doesn’t involve deep cave systems. “Most of the early Stone Age tools we find around the Cradle of Humankind are in caves, which are very difficult to excavate,” explains Stratford.

The shallow excavation site has roughly 20 people working on it, trying to find small bits of rock that may have formed part of a larger tool. “They look like they’re 1.5-million to 1-million years old,” says Stratford, who believes that the most likely hominid to have made the tools is Homo ergaster. “We don’t really know because we rarely find bone and stone tools in the same place,” he cautions.

Master’s student Nicci Sherwood, who is supervising the undergraduates, says the experience for the students is invaluable. “They’re here to learn the method of excavating – how to set up your grids, how to clear them, and how to dig down to the levels that you’re looking for.”

Bongumenzi, a student working on the site, says that his first dig has been very successful. “I’ve had great success, I’ve retrieved about five artefacts,” he says. “We’re not expecting any bones, any animals whatsoever; we’re just looking for stone tools.”

The importance of finding and analysing these tools, which are sent to laboratories for testing, is that they paint a picture of how Homo ergaster may have conceived of the tools. Matt Lotter, a PhD student working at the site, says, “In order to get into the mind of the being who created the tool, you’ve got to look at the technological aspect; what steps were used to get that end product, as opposed to the end product itself.”

Exhibition curator Lindsay Marshall says that they have known about the existence of stone tools at Maropeng for some time. “It goes all the way back to 2005, when they were surveying the land,” she explains. Marshall says that they will soon turn the excavation site into a display, which visitors will walk past on their way to the Welcome Centre. People will be able to view a cross-section of the terrain, and they will able to get a close look at the different sedimentary layers or “horizons”. “We want to keep it as interactive as possible,” says Marshall.

The students seemed to be very focused on their work, not distracted by the schoolchildren and other visitors making their way to the Visitor Centre. Having a group of archaeologists-in-training unearthing these historic artefacts on Maropeng’s front lawn was not only a welcome sight, it was inspiring!

Watch this video which was filmed at the Wits students’ excavation at Maropeng:

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