Mediaeval ArchaeologyProtohistoryInstitute

 Excavation Projects

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Investigations of the Stone Age Archaeology of the Geelbek Dunes, West Coast National Park.

The Institute of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology at the University of Tübingen has been conducting archaeological investigations in the Geelbek Dunes since January of 1998. The Geelbek dune field lies approximately 90 km north of Cape Town, only several kilometers from the Atlantic coast. Stone artifacts and animal bones can be found on many of the large surfaces between the hills of mobile sand. Funded with a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Science Foundation), the project intends to achieve the following goals:

1. the discovery, recovery and analysis of the Stone Age remains with special attention paid to the spatial distribution of finds,
2. the investigation of the local geology (including absolute dating methods) and its connection to the archaeological finds,
3. and the recovery of data useful in the reconstruction of the Pleistocene and Holocene palaeoecology.