Bambata Cave is one of the

Southern Africa Southern Africa is the southernmost subregion of the African continent, south of the Congo and Tanzania. The physical location is the large part of Africa to the south of the extensive Congo River basin. Southern Africa is home to a number of ...

prehistoric sites situated in Motobo National Park along with Inanke, Nswatugi, Pomengwe and Silozwane caves in

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozam ...

Location

The Bambata cave is a huge archaeological cave located in the west part of the Motobo National Park and in the north side of the game park on the Kezi-

Bulawayo Bulawayo (, ; Ndebele: ''Bulawayo'') is the second largest city in Zimbabwe, and the largest city in the country's Matabeleland region. The city's population is disputed; the 2022 census listed it at 665,940, while the Bulawayo City Council cl ...

road. The cave takes its name from the Bambata Mountain, a dome-shaped granite mountain which is located in the north-west of this region and is one of the highest hills in Western Matopos. Bambata cave is situated approximately below the summit on the eastern side of the Bambata Hill. The cave is invisible from the surrounding valleys and the hill summit.

First excavations

In 1918, George Arnold and Neville Jones started initial examinations in the cave with great difficulties. An area of deep, long, wide was found at the back side of the cave and two smaller holes on the east and west sides. The surface of the cave covered with a grey ash-powder layer and the entrance was blocked by a thicket of thorns which made the inside darker. After clearing away the bushes, a more precise examination was done on the floor of the cave. Several Wilton type scrapers, 1-2 crescents in jasper and white quartz, pieces of pottery polished brown to black were found here. Wilton type scrapers and polished black and brown pottery samples were found in the top layer of the cave that required extreme caution. Traces of

hyrax Hyraxes (), also called dassies, are small, thickset, herbivorous mammals in the order Hyracoidea. Hyraxes are well-furred, rotund animals with short tails. Typically, they measure between long and weigh between . They are superficially simil ...

antelope The term antelope is used to refer to many species of even-toed ruminant that are indigenous to various regions in Africa and Eurasia. Antelope comprise a wastebasket taxon defined as any of numerous Old World grazing and browsing hoofed mammals ...

, and several

mammal Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or ...

s have also been found during excavations. Animal paintings on the walls prove that Bambata residents were hunters. After the digging was completed, the camp named "Paradise Camp" was established on 7 June 1929. The methodology of the excavation was conducted by Leslie Armstrong and Major T.A. The artefacts were delivered from the excavation site to the camp, in the evenings they were washed and re-grouped. About 7 hours was scheduled for working in the cave per day. Armstrong was mainly dealing with following the paintings on the wall, marking the collected artefacts and sometimes their sorting during the excavations period: ''“After careful consideration, I have decided to term the industry represented by the artefacts derived from the thickest deposit in the cave, amounting to over 10 feet, "Bambata Culture."''

Cultural layers

The artefacts found in the cave are categories into different cultures based on the layers discovered in Area 1 and Area 2 of Bambata cave. Area 1 has layers called Grey ash layer (surface to 6 inches), Upper cave-earth (from 6 inches to 10 feet 6 inches), 10-foot 6-inch level, Lower cave earth (13 feet 6 inches).

Area 1

Grey ash layer

Grey ash layer is characterized by the artefacts of Wilton Industry. As being close to the surface, few samples were found including

microlith A microlith is a small Rock (geology), stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. They were made by humans from around 35,000 to 3,000 years ago, across Europe, Africa, Asia an ...

ic scrapers, besides crescent and triangularly shaped tools, shell beads and bone equipment, small burins. Presence of pencils and small balls of

hematite Hematite (), also spelled as haematite, is a common iron oxide compound with the formula, Fe2O3 and is widely found in rocks and soils. Hematite crystals belong to the rhombohedral lattice system which is designated the alpha polymorph of . ...

and red

ochre Ochre ( ; , ), or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colours produced ...

shows that the inhabitants used them for painting.

Upper cave-earth

Shell beads and

ic, as well as Wilton tools were found in this layer. The artefacts became more elementary in character and technique as it is approached the end of this layer. The artefacts in different colours, moreover, other types of raw coloring materials, such as yellow

, pencils, pieces of red and brown

s and ochres, were found. It's supposed that ochres were used to paint the body and walls.

10-feet 6-inch level

The next layer is characterised by the

Mousterian Industry The Mousterian (or Mode III) is an archaeological industry of stone tools, associated primarily with the Neanderthals in Europe, and to the earliest anatomically modern humans in North Africa and West Asia. The Mousterian largely defines the latt ...

. Tools made of

igneous rock Igneous rock (derived from the Latin word ''ignis'' meaning fire), or magmatic rock, is one of the three main The three types of rocks, rock types, the others being Sedimentary rock, sedimentary and metamorphic rock, metamorphic. Igneous rock ...

milky quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen Tetrahedral molecular geometry, tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, ...

chalcedony Chalcedony ( , or ) is a cryptocrystalline form of silica, composed of very fine intergrowths of quartz and moganite. These are both silica minerals, but they differ in that quartz has a trigonal crystal structure, while moganite is monoclinic. ...

, as well as choppers, hand-axes were found in this layer.

Lower Cave-earth

This layer is full of fragile granites and pieces of

. Most of them were supposedly used as scrapers or knives. Oval tools made of semi-transparent quartz and early forms of cleavers were found here. The

cleaver A cleaver is a large knife that varies in its shape but usually resembles a rectangular-bladed hatchet. It is largely used as a kitchen or butcher knife and is mostly intended for splitting up large pieces of soft bones and slashing through ...

revealed in Bambata cave has not been noticed in the

Lower Paleolithic The Lower Paleolithic (or Lower Palaeolithic) is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 3 million years ago when the first evidence for stone tool production and use by hominins appears in ...

series of

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

Area 2

Area 2 was detached from Area by a wall which had 12 inches thick at the surface and 24 inches at its base. Wilton level, Upper cave-earth, 12-feet level, 16-feet 6-inch level were noticed in this area. * Wilton level is more precise in Area 2 comparing with Area 1. The layer consisted of grey ash with a total thickness of 18 inches. Spalls and fragments of desquamated granite together with artefacts formed a pebble bed representing the heavy leftover from the surface eroded by wind. Camp fires were built by Wilton people upon these peddle-beds, and as a result, the older floor extended on the back side of the cave and became deeper. * Upper Cave-earth. Artefacts found here were similar to the ones found in Upper Cave-earth layer of Area 1. * 12-feet level. Mousterian industry. In the upper layer, the remnants were in the same type with the tools found in the Mousterian level of Area 1. In lower areas, brown sandy insoluble materials containing quartz and feldspar crystals, as well as fragments of white tufaceous. Wood ash or charcoal was not noticed here. * 16-feet 6-inch level. This level is characterized by Acheulean types of tools. The two-faced stone hand axes revealed here at 16-17.5 feet on the south side. Saucer shaped pocket of black loamy earth and fragments of charcoal were found in this layer.

Bambata Ware

Bambata Ware was first revealed in the Bambata cave, but it was also found at Dombozanga Rock Shelter near the

Beitbridge Beitbridge is a border town in the province of Matabeleland South, Zimbabwe. The name also refers to the border post and bridge spanning the Limpopo River, which forms the political border between South Africa and Zimbabwe. The border on the S ...

, Tshangula Cave in the

Matopo Hills The Matobo National Park forms the core of the Matobo or Matopos Hills, an area of granite kopjes and wooded valleys commencing some south of Bulawayo, southern Zimbabwe. The hills were formed over 2 billion years ago with granite being forced t ...

and Gondongwe Cave in Chibi district. The artefacts were found among the samples of Wilton industry and

Later Stone Age The Later Stone Age (LSA) is a period in African prehistory that follows the Middle Stone Age. The Later Stone Age is associated with the advent of modern human behavior in Africa, although definitions of this concept and means of studying it ar ...

tools. Bambata pottery is a part of Bambata ware. The remnants of this culture and decorative stones play an important role in studying the archaeology of

. Though Bambata pottery itself was first recorded by Arnold and Jones in 1918 and 1919, its origins and associations started to be investigated after Jones's (1940) and Schofield's (1941) researches. Bambata pottery is associated with the Later Stone Age and the Iron Age. Pottery materials dated back 2100 B.P and known for the thinness of the samples, stamp decoration, crenellated lips and unusualness of herringbone patterns.

References

{{coord, 20, 30, 12, S, 28, 24, 22, E, display=title, region:ZW_type:landmark 1918 archaeological discoveries Archaeological sites in Zimbabwe History of Zimbabwe Caves of Zimbabwe Archaeological sites of Eastern Africa Mousterian