The Fauna and Overall Interpretation of the “Cutting 10” Acheulean Site at Elandsfontein (Hopefield), Southwestern Cape Province, South Africa

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Abstract
The Cutting 10 site at Elandsfontein (Hopefield), southwestern Cape Province, South Africa, is one of only three sites in southern Africa where bones and Acheulean artifacts have been documented together in primary or near primary context and the only such site where the association is in the open air. The Cutting 10 bones belong to a minimum of 15 mammalian species, which together suggest both a mid-Pleistocene age for the site and a vegetational setting in which grasses played a much more important role than they did historically. The absence of evidence for hearths, windbreaks, and other features, the composition of the artifact assemblage, the relatively sparse scatter of bones and artifacts, the relatively high bone to artifact ratio, the species composition of the fauna, and the numbers of different kinds of skeletal elements represented all indicate that the Cutting 10 occurrence was more a butchering site than a campsite. Although people are probably responsible for most of the bones, some of them probably come from animals that were killed by large carnivores or that died naturally.