120 Years in 120 Objects
Join the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in celebrating the museumโs 120th year of orbiting the sun. Staff and guest curators have chosen one object or item per year of our existence to highlight to the public. Visit the website and our social media platforms regularly to see the latest object and keep an eye out for information about a physical exhibition later this year!
Todayโs Object is from 1991
Jojosi Donga: 110,000 year-old tools by Aron Mazel, Gunther Mรถller, and Manuel Will
In September 1991, Aron Mazel, Mike Moon, and Greg Botha undertook archaeological fieldwork at Jojosi donga, near Nquthu, in the northern part of KwaZulu-Natal (Picture 1). Until then, stone artefacts had been found in great numbers out in the open across KwaZulu-Natal. So, the reason why Jojosi was different is that there were artefacts embedded in the earth on the side of a donga. The team not only collected the eroded stone artefacts from the surface (Picture 2), but they also carefully dug into side of the donga, which they subdivided into small units (Picture 3). This allowed them to plot the location of artefacts in relation to the others.
The artefacts were not investigated at the time. Fortunately, however, Gunther Mรถller (Eberhard-Karls-Universitรคt Tรผbingen, Germany) recently studied them for his Masterโs degree. Altogether, he analysed 7529 stone artefacts, most of which were less than one centimetre in size. Guntherโs research shows that Jojosi was a place where hunter-gatherers chipped stones to make useful artefacts with locally available and very suitable stone known as hornfels. Remarkably, many of the pieces appear to lie in the same position where they were left over 110 000 years ago! This has helped Gunther to reconstruct 48 of the original stones with the pieces that had been flaked off by their hunter-gatherer makers (Picture 4). Alongside Guntherโs research, Dr Svenja Riedesel (University of Cologne, Germany) undertook Optically Stimulated Luminesce (OSL) dating at Jojosi showing that hunter-gatherers worked the stone artefacts there between 110 000 and 128 000 years ago. They belong to a period known archaeologically as the Middle Stone Age.
Context of Jojosi donga archaeological site, which is to the right of the 2m long scale. Picture: Aron Mazel.
Eroding artefacts on the surface of Jojosi donga and artefacts embedded in the side of the donga (marked by the white arrows). Scale is 1m long. Picture: Aron Mazel.
Pegs mark the different horizontal units. Scale is 50cm long. Picture: Aron Mazel.
One of the reconstructed original stones showing the different flakes. Picture: Gunther Mรถller.
