Modern Plant Checklists for Ten Middle Stone Age Archaeological Sites of the Western and Eastern Cape, South Africa

Abstract

This dataset provides plant checklists generated from data recorded over the last ~200 years and curated by the South African National Biodiversity Institute. The data was collected and organised to identify species growing within roughly day-range, home-range and regional foraging tiers around ten archaeological sites with Middle Stone Age deposits in the Western and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa. It forms part of a larger project about Stone Age phyto-fitness landscapes of southern Africa. The data provide modern vegetation inventories as catalyst for exploring the phyto-fitness potential of certain landscapes in terms foodplants, fuelwood, medicinal and other useful plants. Archaeo-botanical remains, archaeo-botanical surveys and palaeo-climatic data can be used to assess, strengthen and/or constrain the resulting hypotheses.

Keywords

• blombos cave
• boomplaas
• diepkloof
• hollow rock shelter
• klasies river
• klein kliphuis
• klipdrift
• matjes river
• pinnacle point
• ysterfontein