Wonderwerk Cave

Wonderwerk Cave is an archaeological site, formed originally as an ancient solution cavity in dolomite rocks of the Kuruman Hills, situated between Danielskuil and Kuruman in the Northern Cape Province, South Africa. It is a National Heritage Site, managed as a satellite of the McGregor Museum in Kimberley. Geologically, hillside erosion exposed the northern end of the cavity, which extends horizontally for about 140 m (460 ft) into the base of a hill. Accumulated deposits inside the cave, up to 7 m (23 ft) in-depth, reflect natural sedimentation processes such as water and wind deposition as well as the activities of animals, birds, and human ancestors over some 2 million years. The site has been studied and excavated by archaeologists since the 1940s and research here generates important insights into human history in the subcontinent of Southern Africa. Evidence within Wonderwerk cave has been called the oldest controlled fire. Wonderwerk means "miracle" in the Afrikaans language.

The cave contains up to 6 m (20 ft) depth of archaeological deposits reflecting human and environmental history through the Earlier, Middle and Later Stone Ages to the present. Cosmogenic dating suggests that basal sediment entered the cave some 2 million years ago.

Rock art occurs in the form of parietal paintings within the first 40 m (130 ft) from the entrance, possibly all less than 1000 years old, and small engraved stones found within the deposit, mainly from the Later Stone Age sequence where they date back some 10,500 years. The associations of older engraved or striated pieces have yet to be substantiated.

Major damage was caused in the 1940s when local farmers dug up large parts of the cave interior to bag and sell organic-rich material as fertiliser – which in fact comprised stratified archaeological deposits containing artifacts, bone and other material that would have been crucial to an understanding of the cultural and palaeoenvironmental history of the site. The presence of bone was reported upon, leading to the first archaeological and zooarchaeological investigations.

The initial archaeological studies of the 1940s, by Malan, Cooke and Wells, were followed up briefly by K.W. Butzer in the 1970s. Peter Beaumont of the McGregor Museum in Kimberley then carried out major excavations at the site between 1978 and 1993, with Anne Thackeray and Francis Thackeray working at the site in 1979, excavating and researching the Later Stone Age levels from cultural and archaeozoological perspectives respectively. Work led by Michael Chazan of the University of Toronto, Liora Kolska Horwitz of The Hebrew University and Francesco Berna of Simon Fraser University, in collaboration with the McGregor Museum (where excavated assemblages are housed), was carried out from around 2008. A digital model of the site was created by laser scanning, forming part of the Zamani Project. Key team members who have worked on the dating of the lower units are the late Hagai Ron (magnetostratigraphic or palaeomagnetic dating), Ari Matmon (cosmogenic isotope dating), Robyn Pickering (U/Pb dating) and Naomi Porat (Optically stimulated luminescence dating). Results of these archaeological, dating, sedimentological and palaeoenvironmental studies were first reported at a symposium convened by Chazan and Horwitz at the site. They have since been published in a series of papers, and in a special issue on the site published in 2015. In April 2021, archaeologists from the University of Toronto and the Hebrew University announced the results of magnetostratigraphy and cosmogenic dating of the cave. According to the paper published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, making of the simple Oldowan tools and finding of animal bones from the 2.5-metre (8 ft 2 in) thick sedimentary layer inside prove that this cave was occupied by Early Stone Age humans about 2 million years ago.

The sediments within the cave exhibit exceptional preservation of organic remains including macro-botanical remains, phytoliths and micro and macro-fauna which shed light inter alia on species extinctions relative to the end of the last ice age circa 10 000 years ago – studied by Francis Thackeray. Margaret Avery and Yolanda Fernandez-Jalvo are studying the small mammal remains introduced to the cave sediments as part of the contents of owl droppings and which provide indications as to the palaeenvironmental conditions outside the cave.

Also preserved are pollen, another key source of information on changing environmental conditions outside the cave, currently studied by Louis Scott but initially examined by E.M. van Zinderen Bakker. Lloyd Rossouw is researching phytoliths from the cave, which show changing vegetation profiles, while preserved charcoal is being studied by Marion Bamford to generate data on woody plants.

Deposition processes have been the focus of work by Karl Butzer and, currently, Paul Goldberg and Francesco Berna.