Research Article STEENBOKFONTEIN 9KR: A MIDDLE STONE AGE SPRING SITE IN LIMPOPO, SOUTH AFRICA LYN WADLEY 1 * , MAY L. MURUNGI 1 , DAVID WITELSON 2 , ROBERT BOLHAR 3 , MARION BAMFORD 1 , CHRISTINE SIEVERS 2 , AURORE VAL 1,4 & PALOMA DE LA PEÑA 1,2 1 Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa *Corresponding author. E-mail: lyn.wadley@wits.ac.za 2 Archaeology Department, School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa 3 Geology Department, School of Geosciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa 4 Ditsong National Museum of Natural History, 432 Visagie St, Pretoria, South Africa (Received April 2016. Revised August 2016) ABSTRACT Steenbokfontein 9KR is a Middle Stone Age spring site in the Waterberg, Limpopo. It is situated in a geological remnant, the Vaalwater Formation, a former basin that filled with fine-grained siltstone and sandstone. The ready supplies of water and siliceous rock attracted Stone Age settlement. The petrographic and XRF analyses suggest that the rock used is silicified siltstone. The outcrop is exposed at the spring and the site appears to have been deliberately exploited for tool-making rock. Here, people tested rock slabs for their suitability and knapped some flakes and blades on site. The excavated area shows signs of post-depositional disturbance, and damage that resembles trampling is present on both lithics and geological pieces of siltstone. Phytolith preservation is excellent and a woodland savanna is implied by the identifications. Cyperaceae once grew around the spring, although they no longer do. Key words: Middle Stone Age, spring site, phytoliths, silicified siltstone, lithic technology. INTRODUCTION The Middle Stone Age (MSA) spring mound site, Steenbok- fontein 9KR (hereafter called Steenbokfontein), is on the farm of the same name on the Waterberg plateau, Limpopo Province (Steenbokfontein 9KR (Portion 1) S24.04.661; E28.05.634) (Figs 1 & 2). Steenbokfontein is unusual in Limpopo, archaeo- logically, geologically and environmentally, as we now explain. From the 1950s onwards, archaeologists excavating MSA sites in the interior of South Africa recognised a lithic industry containing long blades, truncated blades with retouched edges, and long unifacial points. They named it after the town of Pietersburg (now Polokwane). Pietersburg Industries are located principally in the north of South Africa, but they have not yet been documented north of the Limpopo River. Most Pietersburg sites in Limpopo Province are caves or rockshelters, the best known being Cave of Hearths (Mason 1962, 1988; Sampson 1974; Sinclair 2009), Olieboomspoort (Mason 1962; Van der Ryst 2006), Bushman Rock Shelter (Plug 1981; Porraz et al. 2015) and Mwulu’s Cave (Tobias 1949; Sampson 1974). The open site Blaaubank, a gravel donga near Rooiberg, has many felsite and quartzite Pietersburg tools overlying Earlier Stone Age ones (Mason 1962). Another open site, Kalkbank, also reported to have a Pietersburg industry, yielded only a few dozen lithics (Mason 1962) amongst the large faunal collection that is now known to have been accumulated predominantly by non-human agents (Hutson & Cain 2008). All these sites are below the Waterberg escarpment and, apart from Kalkbank, all have extensive sequences potentially beginning in an early phase of the MSA or even before that in the Earlier Stone Age. Their lithics are mostly made on rocks locally available in size- able chunks that enable knapping of large, elongated products. The Pieterburg Industry, as presently defined, may well be a response to the availability of hefty blocks of fine-grained rock. Morphological characteristics are recorded in detail for Cave of Hearths, but this is not the case for most Pietersburg industries, and the term has often been used loosely, and clearly needs revision. It is also necessary to study more open sites in northern South Africa to see how their assemblages compare with the better researched ones from cave and rock shelter sites. A recently-excavated MSA spring and peat site, Wonderkrater (Barré et al. 2012; Backwell et al . 2014), which is near Mookgopong (formerly Naboomspruit), has contributed to this aim. Unfortunately, the late MIS6 and MIS3 occupations have few lithics. Most are made on rhyolite; broken and whole flakes are in the majority, followed by broken blades and denticulates, many of which seem to be cutting tools (Backwell et al. 2014). Cave of Hearths (Mason 1962, 1988; Sampson 1974) has a particularly long Pietersburg sequence. MSA lithics from Beds 5–8 include prepared cores, long blades, Levallois flakes, and unifacial and bifacial points occasionally on hornfels, but more often on quartzite and andesite (Mason 1962, 1988; Sampson 1974; Sinclair 2009). Long blades sometimes were manufac- tured from blocks of locally available andesite (Sinclair 2009). Olieboomspoort Rock Shelter is another MSA site of consider- able significance (Mason 1962). Here a Pietersburg Industry made from felsite, quartzite, cryptocrystalline minerals and mudstone overlies an Earlier Stone Age (ESA) assemblage and underlies a long Later Stone Age (LSA) sequence (Mason 1962; Van der Ryst 2006). Bipolar flaking is part of this Pietersburg Industry (Mason 1962) as it is at the earlier Limpopo site, Kudu Koppie (Sumner 2013). Mwulu’s Cave is thought to contain a late Pietersburg made on quartzite (Tobias 1949; Sampson 1974), as is also the case at Kalkbank (Sampson 1974) and Blaaubank (Mason 1962). Much farther east, the hornfels- dominated assemblages from Bushman Rock Shelter have long blades, retouched blades and elongated unifacial points (Plug 1981; Porraz et al. 2015). Most excavated MSA sites in Limpopo are below the escarpment, but amongst the known ones on the Waterberg plateau, where Steenbokfontein is situated, is a small rock shelter, North Brabant (New Belgium 608 LR), which was exca- vated by Schoonraad and Beaumont (1968). Here the MSA 130 South African Archaeological Bulletin 71 (204): 130–145, 2016