SWARTKRANS
LOCATION
Brecciated cavity-fill site, Blaauwbank river valley,
some 13 km NNW of Krugersdorp, Gauteng, South
Africa.
DISCOVERY
Hominids were first recovered at Swartkrans by R.
Broom and J. Robinson in 1948-1949. Robinson con-
tinued directing excavations there through 1952 and,
after a period during which the site was extensively
mined, C. K. Brain resumed paleoanthropological
work for the period 1965-1986. A steady stream of
hominid fossils was found throughout this time. The
first specimen reported as Homo was found in 1949.
MATERIAL
Swartkrans has most prolifically produced australopith
fossils, but the remains of five individuals now generally
attributed to Homo (SK 847 and SK 15,18,43, and 45)
have been recovered from Member 1. In addition,
SK 27 from Member 2 is generally classified in Homo.
Grine (1993) has suggested that a further 10 fossils,
almost all from Member 2, should also be considered
“early Homo.”DATING AND STRATIGRAPHIC CONTEXT
The hominid-bearing deposits at Swartkrans origi-
nated as infill of a subterranean solution cavity in
dolomitic limestones. This brecciated rubble, seamedwith secondarily deposited pure carbonates, was sub-
sequently exposed at the surface by erosion. The site
was originally exploited by miners, who blasted away
the breccias to obtain access to the seams of lime.
The latest revision of the highly complex stratigraphy
of the site (Brain, 1993) recognizes six distinct units
organized into five successive Members. Member 1
consists of the contemporaneous “Hanging Rem-
nant” (the source of the type specimen of “Telanthro-
pus capensis”) and “Lower Bank” deposits. The later
Member 2 possesses both calcified breccia and decal-
cified deposits, both of which have yielded Homo
fossils. Member 3 contains australopith teeth and
burned bone, while Member 4 contains Middle
Stone Age artifacts (but no hominid fossils). Member
5 is substantially more recent, although it includes re-
mains of an extinct springbok species. Only faunal
dating is currently possible for Swartkrans Members
1-4 (although chronometric methods are on the way)
and, on the basis principally of bovids, Vrba (1982),
has placed the Hanging Remnant fauna at about
1.8-1.5 Ma. It was earlier assumed that Members 2
and 3 were faunally as well as lithologically distinct
from Member 1. However, more recent work has
shown that Members 1,2 and 3 are in fact both fau-
nally (Watson, 1993) and artifactually (Clark, 1993;
Brain and Shipman, 1993) very similar, and it is cur-
rently assumed that the three Members together span
the period between about 1.8 and 1.0 Ma (Brain,
1993). Compared to the total number of hominids
recovered, Homo specimens are significantly more275