Introduction to the project and excavation of Diepkloof Rock Shelter (Western Cape, South Africa): a view on the Middle Stone Age

This introduction presents the background to the present research project at Diepkloof Rock Shelter, initiated in 1998. It is followed by a series of original papers that were presented in November 2010 at the join 13th PAA Congress (Panafrican Association of Prehistory and Associated Disciplines) and 20th conference of SAfA (Society of Africanist Archaeologists) at the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar (Senegal). These papers were presented in a “Symposium on the MSA sequence of Diepkloof Rock Shelter: a view on the cultural evolution of southern African modern humans” organized by Pierre-Jean Texier, Guillaume Porraz, John Parkington and Jean-Philippe Rigaud. This series of papers is a first attempt at a multidisciplinary reconstruction of the way Middle Stone Age people inhabited the site of Diepkloof and the way they interacted with their environment. The resultant narrative outlines artifactual change through the sequence and discusses the factors that might underlie it.

► Excavation at Diepkloof has brought to light a sequence of 3.1 m thick.
► The Middle Stone Age sequence dates back to OIS 5 and lasts until the beginning of OIS 3.
► The site is remarkable for the quality and the diversity of the archaeological finds preserved.
► Diepkloof is a key site to discuss the history of African Late Pleistocene populations.