Page 92 - KBHA Bulletin 15

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Many assemblages, those from Howiesons Poort included, come from sites where only one

kind of assemblage occurs. The typological evolutionary assumption then comes into play,
placing hitherto undated assemblages into that part of the sequence where they seem best to

fit. The excavated tools from Howiesons Poort were smaller than most MSA artefacts, were
made on blades rather than flakes and included the ‘crescents’ that resembled the LSA ones

from the Wilton assemblages, only slightly larger. Typologically this hinted at an age
intermediate between MSA and LSA but Goodwin placed them in the latest MSA. Also

placed late in the MSA were so-called Still Bay assemblages, named after a collection made

in the open sandy dunes near the small village of that name in the southern Cape. Still Bay
assemblages were characterised by rather beautiful, skilfully made bi-facial leaf-shaped

points. It was, of course, impossible in those days to date a surface assemblage such as this
without resorting to some typological assumptions about change.

Victor and Bertie Peers were amateurs in the best sense of the word, ‘lovers’ of the idea and

practice of prehistory. Australian-born Peers (b. 1874) came to South Africa in 1899 during

the Anglo-Boer War. Thereafter he worked for the SAR & H for 30 years. His son Bertie was
born in 1903. During the 1920s the family settled in Fish Hoek and became interested in the

various rock shelters there. In 1927, guided by John Goodwin, they began unearthing

substantial assemblages from the Cape Peninsula in sandstone overhangs at Kalk Bay and
Fish Hoek. (Figs. 2.1 – 2.4). In hindsight, and reading from their field notes, they found a

repeated situation where shelly deposits with small artefacts like those from Wilton overlay
more earthy deposits with no shells and larger, apparently MSA stone tools. The Peers

thought they had found artefacts of Howiesons Poort type sandwiched between more ‘normal’
MSA assemblages that they called Still Bay. This implies they found stratigraphic levels of

leaf-shaped bifacial points both above and below those with crescents made on blades. We

should remember, though, that these terminological decisions were being made on rare
assumed typical retouched pieces. The distinction between Still Bay and other MSA

assemblages was in those days rather imprecise and certainly impressionistic.

The existence of Howiesons Poort assemblages in these Peninsula caves was, however, and
remains in no doubt (Goodwin and Peers 1953, Jolly 1948, Malan 1949, 1955). Also coming