Archaeology wins Pinnacle Point provincial heritage site status

The archaeological sites at Mossel Bay’s Pinnacle Point have been declared provincial heritage sites.

The sites are famed for revealing some of the earliest evidence for modern human behaviour.

“Pinnacle Point is significant because it’s a uniquely dense concentration of well-preserved archaeological sites which contain a record of human occupation over a period of about 170 000 years — from the time when modern human behaviour first emerged to the precolonial period,” said Professor Curtis Marean who heads the South African Coastal Palaeoclimate, Palaeoenvironment, Palaeoecology, and Palaeoanthropology (SACP4) Project, which is studying the finds from Pinnacle Point.

The archaeological value of the sites came to light in 1997, when an environmental impact assessment of the area was being done for what would become a golf resort. [...] timeslive.co.za/