Paleoenvironmental and human behavioral implications of the Boegoeberg 1 late pleistocene hyena den, Northern Cape Province, South Africa

Boegoeberg 1 (BOG1) is located on the Atlantic coast of South Africa, 850 k m north of Cape Town, The site is a shallow rock shelter in the side of a s and-choked gully that was emptied by diamond miners. Abundant coprolites, c hewed bones, and partially digested bones implicate hyenas as the bone accu mulators. The location of the site, quantity of bones, and composition of t he fauna imply it was a brown hyena nursery den. The abundance of Cape fur seal bones shows that the hyenas had ready access to the coast. Radiocarbon dates place the site before 37,000 C-14 yr ago, while the large average si ze of the black-backed jackals and the presence of extralimital ungulates i mply cool, moist conditions, probably during the early part of the last gla ciation (isotope stage 4 or stage 3 before 37,000 C-14 yr ago) or perhaps d uring one of the cooler phases (isotope substages 5d or 5b) within the last interglaciation. Comparisons of the BOG1 seal bones to those from regional Middle Stone Age (MSA) and Later Stone Age (LSA) archeological sites sugge st (1) that hyena and human seal accumulations can be distinguished by a te ndency for vertebrae to be much more common in a hyena accumulation and (2) that hyena and LSA accumulations can be distinguished by a tendency for hy ena-accumulated seals to represent a much wider range of individual seal ag es. Differences in the way hyenas and people dismember, transport, and cons ume seal carcasses probably explain the contrast in skeletal part represent ation, while differences in season of occupation explain the contrast in se al age representation. Like modern brown hyenas, the BOG1 hyenas probably o ccupied the coast year-round, while the LSA people focused their coastal vi sits on the August-October interval when nine-to-eleven-month-old seals wer e abundant. The MSA sample from Klasies River Mouth Cave 1 resembles BOG1 i n seal age composition, suggesting that unlike LSA people, MSA people obtai ned seals more or less throughout the year. (C) 1999 University of Washingt on.