Balerno Shelter 3: a Later Stone Age site in the Shashe-Limpopo confluence area, South Africa

Abstract

Balerno Shelter 3 is a small shelter on the farm Balerno near the Pont Drift border post in the Shashe-Limpopo confluence area, South Africa. It was occupied at times by small groups of hunter-gatherers over a period of 1000-1600 years, possibly as part of a pattern of aggregation and dispersal. Three phases of use/occupation are identified, based on patterns in the lithic assemblage, which are supported by other non-lithic artefact categories such as ostrich eggshell. These phases include a later first-millennium BC period of use, dating from the third to fourth centuries BC; an early first-millennium AD phase dating to between the second and fifth centuries AD; and a third and final phase dating from the fifth century AD onwards. Some contact with farmers who settled in the area seems likely, since a glass bead and several burnished (possibly) Mapungubwe period (AD 1220-1300) pottery sherds were found at the shelter in the younger spits.