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This paper presents the first insight into the interpretation of the wood charcoal from the Holocene layers of Wonderwerk Cave. Situated in the Northern Cape Province in the arid interior of South Africa, the site provides a unique and valuable chronological record of past environmental fluctuations and responding human behavioural adaptations spanning the last two million years. The Holocene strata have been dated to cover the last 12.5 ka cal BP years, but exclude the last 100 years because of contamination. A sizeable amount of charcoal was recovered from these strata and remnants have been identified, described and the species composition amongst the strata compared. Most identified species are those that tolerate hot, dry conditions, signalling an arid trend during the Holocene. Comparison with present day species distributions suggests an eastwards shift in modern vegetation. The charcoal data also indicate that during the mid Holocene there was a wetter period from 6.2 to 4.5 ka cal BP, coinciding with stratum 4a. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to investigate the Sibudu Cave habitat that is dated to the late Pleistocene using archaeological wood charcoal, in order to reconstruct the environment and the activity of the people who interacted with the landscape. Standard anthracology procedures were applied in this qualitative study to analyse charcoal remains from the cave. A representative subset of charcoal remains was subsampled from a larger assemblage and environmental data, as well as evidence of wood use, are interpreted from 72 charcoal types that include 42 types that we identified taxonomically. We highlight that the environment at Sibudu supported a multi-layered Forest with Savanna vegetation based on the presence of many important taxa of these vegetation communities. The wood of the identified taxa has much rot fungi and was also burrowed by pests; however, it is not possible to infer at this stage if the fungi seen here were pathogenic. The presence of fungi is indicative of an environmental setting with high humidity and warm temperatures, such as is optimal for these types of fungi to flourish. Climatic conditions interpreted here agree with previous interpretations that were made from other environmental proxies. These conditions were only intense enough to disturb the microhabitat at Sibudu and did not change the vegetation near the cave. Also noted during the analysis, is that burning wood logs that were infected with brown rot consistently from c.73 to 72 ka probably produced very warm fires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]