Rock Art Research

Rescue fieldwork in 1998–99 at the Beeshoek South site just west of Postmasburg was directed at recording and dating petroglyphs on a c. 100 m long white shale outcrop just prior to their destruction by mining operations. The hammered palaeoart there comprised iconic depictions, abstract designs and small randomly placed cupules that would seem to mark a terminal phase of the cupule tradition in South Africa. Chronometric evidence indicates that these markings were coeval with the Phase 3 petroglyphs at Tswalu to the north, thereby showing that temporal changes in rainfall also controlled human occupation density in the Postmasburg vicinity.