454 



ON SEVERAL IMPLEMENTS AND ORNAMENTS FROM 

 STRANDLOOPER SITES IN THE EASTERN PROVINCE. 



BY 



John Hewitt, B.A. 

 Director, Albany Museum, Grahamstown . 



With Plates IX-XII. 



Bead July 15, 1921. 



Pygmy crescents closely resembling those which have long been 

 known from Europe were figured and described by the late J. P. 

 Johnson', from Riverton Island, from Bulawayo, and from 

 the junction of the Vaal with its tributary, the Hart River. They 

 are not common in South Africa, being apparently absent from 

 the well-known Strandlooper sites of the Western Province. In 

 his monumental work, 2 Dr. L. Peringuey figures only one 

 example, from the Orange Free State, giving no other record of 

 this very characteristic type, although pygmy implements of 

 various other kinds are figured and described from the sand-dune 

 middens of the Cape Peninsula : nor does he mention the larger 

 crescents, such as I now record from different sites on the coast 

 of the Eastern Province. Nevertheless, the occurrence of pygmy 

 crescents of this type has been reported to me by Mr. H. Harger 

 from the dunes at Still Bay, near Heidelberg, C.P. In the Eastern 

 Province pygmy crescents (Plate XI, Fig. 10) were discovered quite 

 recently in a large rock shelter on the farm Wilton, near Alicedale, 

 by Mr. C. Windsor Wilmot, postmaster of Qumbu. On that site, 

 ornamented with numerous rock paintings, Mr. Wilmot found in 

 the ash and debris of the floor a great quantity of small scrapers 

 (Fig. 9) and ostrich shell beads, and together with them about a 

 dozen or more crescents, all small yet beautifully finished, the length 

 ranging from half to five-sixths of an inch, with a maximum thick- 

 ness along the curved back of one-seventh of an inch. Some of 

 them still bear traces of red paint on the edges, and in one- 

 instance the paint forms a more or less distinct line on the under 

 surface, as if the maker of the implement had first outlined the 

 curve in paint on the original flake. A single pygmy crescent 

 was also found a few months ago in a rock shelter on the farm 

 Berg Plaats, near Grahamstown. 



A series of six larger specimens, rather coarsely made, but 

 differing chiefly in size from the Wilton crescents, was found in 

 a shell-mound near the mouth of the Nahoon River, by Mr. Jas. 

 Swan : these (Fig. 10) are about one and a half inches long and 

 four-sevenths of an inch wide. A still larger example, but broken, 

 measuring originally about two inches by two-thirds of an inch, 



1 "The Pre-Historic Period in South^AfrTcaT" 1912. 



2 "The Stone Ages of South Africa." Annals of South African; 

 Museum, Vol. VIII. 



