Palaeo-landscapes and hydrology in the South African interior: Implications for human history

Recent research reveals that the arid western interior of South Africa has experienced substantially more humid conditions on several occasions during the last 70 000 years. These findings, likely regional in scope, speak to changes to the resource base available to prehistoric hunter-gatherers. Together with recent archaeological findings from this region, there has emerged a growing recognition that previouslyarchaeologically overlooked areas of South Africa’s arid interior need to be included in models of human history. This presents new challenges for archaeologists and palaeoclimatologists, particularly given the prevalence of surficial, rather than stratified, archaeological evidence throughout much of this region.