Kimberley - The discovery of human remains on a farm near Britstown has the Northern Cape archaeological community suspecting that a rare Stone Age burial site may well have been uncovered.
The unusual discovery was made late last week and while opinions regarding the origin of the remains may differ, the historical significance of this site is still to be determined.
However, further investigation will be required to determine whether the skeleton found last week belonged to a member of an indigenous tribe who was respectfully laid to rest or simply the victim of a natural disaster.
Local farmer, Diederick Badenhorst, said that the remains are likely to have been uncovered by erosion, adding that the most plausible explanation for the origin of the body was that it belonged to a victim of drowning from more than a century ago.
“I don’t actually think that this is a burial site at all,” he told the DFA on Monday morning. “The skeleton was found in the mud near the river when one of the labourers on the farm was out looking for jackal tracks in the vicinity.
“It seems more likely that these are the remains of a labourer who could have drowned during one of the floods in the 1800s,” Badenhorst said.
“The worker made this discovery on Thursday last week and we went to investigate over the weekend. This is the first find of this kind that we have come across but there have been similar stories told by workers on farms further up river.”
Badenhorst added that he had been in contact with head of archaeology at the McGregor Museum, Dr David Morris, who was looking into the matter.
“I was asked to send some pictures through so that the matter can be investigated.
Morris said that further research into the finding would be required before the historical value of the site could be determined. With ostrich eggshells also found near the skeleton, the possibility that these are the remains from a formal burial cannot be ruled out.
“The farm is on the Orange River bed south of Britstown,” Morris said.
“Badenhorst feels that it may not be a burial but a body that was washed down and deposited by flood. It is difficult to say for certain without physically seeing the site first but it looks as if it could well be a Later Stone Age burial, originally in an upright seated (flexed) posture, but slumped backwards. We will have to see,” he said.
Later Stone Age burials are not common in that part of the Northern Cape.
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