Chapter 3 Archaeological survey on the Vredenburg Peninsula Karim Sadr, John Gribble & Gail Euston-Brown Introduction The Vredenburg Peninsula (VP) extends roughly 30 km from the bays of Saldanha to St Helena, and 20 km from Cape Columbine to the edge of an extensive, flat, low- lying sandy plain in the east (Fig. 1). The landscape in the southern half of the peninsula is less hilly than in the north, where the terrain is moderately dissected and a considerable part of it is very rocky. Typical exfoliation domes, cliffs and bare masses of granite occur at several localities. The highest point on the peninsula is on Patrysberg in the northeast at 265 m above sea level. From the high ground on the eastern edge of the peninsula two seasonal streams flow north and northwest. These two streams’ basins form the core of the VP survey area. The coastal strip of the peninsula contains both rocky shores and sandy bays. Rocky shores are more numerous to the south of Paternoster Bay and on the north-eastern coast of the peninsula. Partly to completely stabilized dunes with elevations up to 150 m in places extend inland (within VP) for considerable distances. In other parts, notably in the lower basin of the northern and southern streams, the terrain is flat and the 20 m contour reaches several kilometres inland. Although the details vary somewhat between different data sets, the sea level changes in the Langebaan Lagoon (Compton 2001), a southerly extension of Saldanha Bay, and δ 18 O isotopes from marine shell along the West Coast of South Africa (Cohen et al. 1992) generally point to a cool-warm-cool climatic sequence since the mid- Holocene. The Langebaan Lagoon shows lower sea levels, hence cooler conditions, for most of the first millennium BC (Compton 2001: 404; see also Jerardino 1995). The δ18O isotopes of shellfish (Cohen et al. 1992) indicate that this cool period extends back to the mid- third millennium BC, while another episode of low sea levels in the Langebaan Lagoon suggests cold periods back to the early fourth millennium BC (Compton 2001: fig. 5). Sea levels indicate a high stand, and hence warmer conditions, centred on the second half of the first millennium AD. This was followed by lower sea levels in the first half of the second millennium AD (Compton 2001: 404), with a cool episode reflected in the shellfish isotope data which indicate low sea surface temperatures from roughly the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries AD (Cohen et al. 1992). Given that the VP is in the winter rainfall zone, and that the climate today is thought to resemble that of the warmer period in the first millennium AD (February 1990; Cohen et al. 1992), we can estimate that the millennia BC were generally cooler and wetter than today, as was the first half of the second millennium AD, while the first millennium AD would have had rainfall comparable to today’s, which is to say around 200–300 mm/ year. Some of the 17th and 18th century European records mention two different populations in the south-western Cape: Khoekhoen herders and San foragers. Were there really two culturally and linguistically distinct groups sharing this landscape, and if so how ancient was this cultural dichotomy? The question has been the subject of long lasting and robust debate (e.g. Elphick 1977, 1985; Deacon 1984a; Klein 1986; Schrire & Deacon 1989; Smith et al. 1991), and inspired the archaeological survey reported here. In the early 1990s, the material signatures of two cultural entities had seemed distinguishable, with the sites of the immigrant herders and the local hunters containing different proportions of broken pottery vessels and formally retouched stone tools (Smith et al. 1991). Also, there seemed to be a clear distinction in the preference for stone tool raw materials as well as size of ostrich eggshell beads. A thorough survey to record the relative proportions of potsherds, large ostrich eggshell beads, formal stone tools and flaked silcrete on each of the easily visible sites on the Vredenburg Peninsula was planned to test the ‘two economies: two cultures’ model. Instead the findings of the survey show a single strand of gradual change in material culture since the mid- Holocene. The earliest report of archaeological fieldwork on the VP is by Sub-lieutenant Phillip Bateman (1946). Stationed at the Saldanha Bay fortress, a correspondent of John Goodwin, Bateman’s enthusiasm peaked with Earlier and Middle Stone Age finds but he also recorded several important Later Stone Age (LSA) sites along with the coastal shell middens which are abundant in this area. Little was added to our knowledge of the archaeology of the VP until the 1960s when Jalmar and Ione Rudner collected ancient pots in the area. The majority of the pots came from open air shell middens along the coast, but the Rudners also recorded pots from the sites of Kasteelberg and Witklip in the interior of the Peninsula. These two inland sites came to play leading roles in the archaeology of this area after the 1980s. For the south-western Cape coastal areas, aside from a Wilton industry the Rudners identified a ‘Midden Industry’ (Rudner & Rudner 1956), and a ‘Sandy Bay culture,’ which they thought might represent an immigrant “…Bushman-Hottentot hybrid race…” (Rudner & Rudner 1954: 107). Alas, the published material allowed little interpretation of these labels (Sampson 1974: 414) and the question of whether these were discrete contemporary cultural traditions,