STRAXDLOOPER INSTRUMENTS AND ORNAMENTS. 459 



to both. Lastly, a single perforated digging-stone (Kwe) and 

 several oval palettes, made of shale, probably do not belong to 

 the dominant culture, for the latter at least are not known from 

 the Tardenoisian sites mentioned by Johnson; whilst, on the other 

 hand, both these neoliths occur in a cave devoid of tiny scrapers 

 at a locality not far from Wilton. The palettes were, neverthe- 

 less, found in the lowest layer of the ashen floor, but may have 

 been deliberately buried. 



Amongst the numerous paintings on the inner wall of the 

 rock-shelter are some spirited representations of antelopes in pro- 

 file. The technique is quite superior, and a number of the ante- 

 lopes are in two colours, red and creamy white, but there are no 

 group scenes. A very distinctive feature is the treatment of the 

 human figure, the limbs and body being tremendously elongated. 

 These, which are wholly red, may not belong to the same period as 

 the antelope pictures. There are also at the same site a few 

 paintings that are most obviously referable to comparatively recent 

 intruders, possibly even refugee Hottentots. They include very 

 crude illustrations of fat-tailed sheep (Fig. 11), painted apparently 

 in a whitish clay, overlying the red pictures of earlier artists. 

 This evidence, added to that of a few scraps of coarse pottery, 

 picked up only on the surface or just below, seems to favour the 

 conclusion derived from the implement data, that a superimposed 

 culture occurs there. Considered separately, not one of these 

 facts is conclusive : the inferior paintings and the end-scrapers 

 may be individual variations, whilst the scanty pottery may have 

 been introduced accidentally. But, connecting the three together 

 on the strength of the modernity of these paintings and the 

 pottery, we seem to approximate to the cultures of Strandlooper 

 site- in the Eastern Karroo. Such hypothesis scarcely affects the 

 strength of the argument connecting the skeletons with the domi- 

 nant culture of this site. 



Thus we arrive at a conclusion which has long been anticipated, 

 but not hitherto so well supported by actual data as now detailed, 

 that the short-headed Bushman made tlie delicate ostrich-shell 

 beads, the pygmy crescents, and the tiny scrapers, and was also 

 the an tli or of rock-paintings of superior and characteristic 

 technique . 



Further, if the end-scrapers are correctly referred to the same 

 culture as the pottery, we are entitled to regard the pygmy culture 

 as an earlier one, not contemporaneous therewith, as Johnson 

 supposed was the case in the Transvaal and Free State. At Wilton 

 the evidence is certainly unfavourable to correlating pottery with 

 pgymy implements, and is thus in agreement with the view that 

 the primitive Bushmen did not make pottery. Yet, in the up- 

 country sites, pottery and pygmy implements have often been 

 taken together. It may be noted that the Azilian culture of 

 Europe is also devoid of pottery and of polished stone implements. 



The difficulty of interpretating the evidence of burials is- 

 illustrated by the case of a certain small cave two miles away 

 from the rock-shelter, on the same farm, Wilton. In this cave — 



9a 



