Ithaca College

Professor Tom Volman of Cornell's anthropology department will speak on his recent research at Peers Cave, South Africa.

This presentation is the February meeting of the Finger Lakes Chapter of the New York State Archaeological Association, which will take place on Tuesday, February 3, at 7:30 pm in CNS 208.

Peers Cave, originally excavated in the early decades of the last century, has a long sequence of deposits extending back tens of thousands of years. A recent program of test excavations determined the limits of previous excavations and located intact deposits with both Later Stone Age (LSA) and Middle Stone Age (MSA) artifact assemblages.

Bone is preserved throughout, including poorly preserved remains from hearth deposits that probably date to the late Middle Pleistocene. Shellfish remains are preserved in both LSA and MSA horizons of the Late Pleistocene age. New radiocarbon determinations provide dates and a context for the skeleton known as "Fish Hook Man," which was originally thought to be associated with the MSA.