Pargeter and colleagues do not escape the dangers inherent in the exercise they embark on. The first is that of creating a straw man argument in which one exaggerates and misinterprets what was said in the article being criticised. The second is that of using your time to look at the speck of dust in your brother's eye instead of paying attention to the plank in your own. The third, if you are lucky enough to find a sympathetic journal, is to rehash the same criticism over and over in multiple articles, changing the tone from very moderate (Mitchell Reference Mitchell2012) to more aggressive (Pargeter Reference Pargeter2014), which inevitably pushes your opponents and any sensible reader to wonder about your motivations.
Pargeter et al.’s attempt to make us appear as the followers of Kossinna “ein Volk, ein Topf” is ridiculous. Let us, to start, make it short and clear. Did we ever claim in our articles (d'Errico et al. Reference d'Errico, Backwell, Villa, Degano, Lucejko, Bamford, Higham, Colombini and Beaumont2012; Villa et al. Reference Villa, Soriano, Tsanova, Degano, Higham, d'Errico, Backwell, Lucejko, Colombini and Beaumont2012) that our results indicated that the people living at Border Cave 44 kya were San, ancestors of the San, speaking a San language or in any way biologically related to the San? No. Did we write that our results supported cultural continuity—meaning a persistence of beliefs, morals, laws, rituals, customs, social organisation and language—between the Border Cave inhabitants and present-day or historically known San? No.
In our articles, we directly date, reassess the stratigraphic provenance and analyse with a number of advanced analytical techniques never previously applied in combination to a site of this period—an input that Pargeter et al. try their best to hide—the lithic assemblages and a number of organic artefacts recovered from Border Cave. We retrace in detail changes in lithic technology occurring at the site between 60 kya and 40 kya, and observe that, although not identical, a number of items dated to or occurring in the 44–40 kya layers, and one dated to 24 kya, resemble those found at Later Stone Age (LSA) sites known to be used by historical or contemporary San hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari. We relied upon this similarity to reach the conclusion that a cultural adaptation—meaning a set of technological innovations and specific artefacts types, including symbolic items—similar in a number of respects to those known at LSA sites and among San populations is observed at Border Cave c. 44 kya. It is in this sense, and in this sense only, that we proposed a degree of continuity with more recent hunter-gatherer adaptations.
With that established, we can move on to other claims that Pargeter et al. make. Did we raise the possibility that this novel cultural adaptation may reflect the emergence of more evanescent cultural traits, on which archaeology notoriously has little grasp, characteristic of historically known San? Yes. Did we claim to have demonstrated that such a link exists? No. Do we consider this to be a matter of archaeological enquiry? Yes. In fact, the field of genetic research has successfully accumulated data on this issue for the last 30 years, and what do we know about the possible resilience of cultural traits in hunter-gatherer populations living in southern Africa between 40 kya and the present? Virtually nothing. Is it the destiny of archaeology to remain mute on this topic, or do we have the means to sharpen our heuristic and analytical tools, ‘take arms against a sea of troubles, and, by opposing, end them’? Pargeter and colleagues are free to think that it is ‘nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’—in other words, to be unequivocally against the idea that such an endeavour should be embraced.
The ways in which Pargeter et al. attempt to show that our approach is, however, not feasible or that our inferences can be rejected are inadequate. A six-entry table (Pargeter et al. above: tab. 1) indicating that ‘bone points’, ‘bone awls’, ‘use of poison’ and ‘notched bone’ are used elsewhere on the planet by traditional societies cannot be considered a serious means of demonstrating or disproving anything. These categories are too broad to carry any significance in this debate. From this table, we know nothing about the technology, appearance, size or function of the artefacts, and the cultural contexts in which each of them occur apparently do not feature the others, rendering such examples even more irrelevant here. Are the ‘bone points’ of the Netsilik Inuit hafted and used as spear points or as arrow tips, and, if the latter, with what kind of bow? Do the tips of their points display tiny incisions similar to those that we have identified at Border Cave, reminiscent of the marks of ownership made by San on their bone arrow points? How do the Mbuti from Congo use poison? Do they apply it with poison applicators consisting of thin, notched wooden rods similar to that found at Border Cave, which still retains traces of poison and is virtually identical to those used historically and at present by San hunters? Do the digging sticks used by the Yiwarea in Australia have a bevelled tip similar in size and morphology to that found at Border Cave and at LSA sites, and, as with the Border Cave example, a diameter falling in the range of those found at LSA sites and in San ethnographic collections? Clearly, the degree of refinement that we have applied in our analysis of material culture from Border Cave and other Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites in the last 15 years is not one that Pargeter et al. are used to, and, we argue, represents what is needed to address such questions effectively.
The second table (Pargeter et al. above: tab. 2) that they present to ‘disprove’ our inferences about Border Cave bone tools also misses the mark. Did we ever claim, as Pargeter and colleagues imply, that Border Cave bone points were morphometrically distinct from all bone tools produced on the planet apart from those of the San? No. Border Cave points are broken, which unfortunately prevents a proper morphometric comparison with LSA and ethnographic arrow points. Measurable variables, however, show that Border Cave points are perfectly comparable to those recorded in more recent contexts and, more importantly, that they are significantly different from previous MSA examples. Pargeter et al. fail to understand that similarities between Border Cave artefacts and LSA or more recent subsistence strategies need to be measured in the light of differences with previous MSA cultures. Of the ten novel cultural features appearing at Border Cave in early LSA layers (ostrich eggshell beads, small bone points, digging stick, bored stones, beeswax mixed with resin, tar made from yellow wood used for hafting, poison, a poison applicator, notched bone objects and Nassarius shell beads) only two are known in the MSA, and for one of them (Nassarius shell beads) we were able to show that the way in which they were strung does not conform with that observed at MSA sites (Vanhaeren et al. Reference Vanhaeren, Van Niekerk, Henshilwood and Erasmus2013).
Pargeter et al.’s Table 3 is nonsensical in that it grossly underestimates the potential role of taphonomic processes and excavation techniques on the occurrence of the artefact types they list in the table. Organic material is exceptionally well preserved at Border Cave for reasons linked to the special geological setting of this cave (Beaumont Reference Beaumont1978; d'Errico et al. Reference d'Errico, Backwell, Villa, Degano, Lucejko, Bamford, Higham, Colombini and Beaumont2012). Most of the items discussed here are very small in size. How many were recovered at LSA excavations conducted without sieving or with 5mm sieves? A number of these items are made of perishable and fragile material that disintegrates during excavation if time-consuming precautions are not taken. It is very telling that no bone tools, engraved ochre or shell beads were found at Still Bay sites; no engraved ostrich egg shells at Howiesons Poort (HP) sites; and no bone tools at HP and post-HP sites before the careful excavations conducted at Blombos, Diepkloof and Sibudu caves; and this in spite of dozens of sites of these periods having been excavated previously. In addition, we notice that Table 3 contains a number of factual errors. Contrary to what Pargeter and colleagues put in their database, no bone ornaments and no ostrich eggshell ornaments are known at Still Bay sites. These sites have instead yielded bone points and bone awls, which are listed as absent in their Table 3. Also, no ostrich eggshell ornaments have been found, to the best of our knowledge, in HP layers, and no bone ornaments are signalled at post-HP sites. First looking at the plank in your own eye is advisable before criticising someone else's work.
There are ways to move on in this debate constructively. The first is to document San material culture better from an ethnoarchaeological perspective. The San populations have been widely documented ethnographically, but with the exception of few amendable studies, little has been done to produce data describing their technology with the degree of precision that can be used by archaeologists when analysing past material culture. We are carrying out this work (see, for example, Wadley et al. Reference Wadley, Trower, Backwell and d'Errico2015) with the help of San elders and the analysis of unpublished museum collections. Second, Border Cave and other early LSA sites have not revealed all of their secrets. The ongoing reappraisal of some material found at Border Cave (d'Errico & Backwell Reference d'Errico and Backwell2016) and the new excavations recently commenced at this site may provide better insights into the processes that led to the emergence of the cultural innovations discussed here and their eventual maintenance in more recent populations.
