![]() ![]() Sites with * are all in the Seekoei River Valley (see Sampson 2010 for references to the other sites please see Lombard and Badenhorst 2019) Bottom: Dates for Stone Age stone structures from Namibia and South Africa (modelled in OxCal v4.3.2, using the Southern Hemisphere Cal13 calibration curve Hogg et al. 1e: Location of the Keimoes kites in relation to the surrounding veld types (NKb5 = Kalahari Karroid Shrubland, NKb3 = Bushmanland Arid Grassland, the SVkd1 = Gordonia Duneveld, AZa3 = Lower Gariep Vegetation zone ). 1d: The LiDAR-scanned Keimoes Kite Landscape. 1c: Location of the Keimoes kite sites in relation to the Gariep (Orange River). 1b: The Keimoes 3 site and landscape from eye level looking northeast (Photo: ML). Top:1a: Biome map of southern Africa with rainfall regimes (below dotted line = winter rain, between dotted and dashed lines = year-round rain, above dashed line = summer rain), Stone Age stone walling localities (black dots), and the location of Keimoes, the Seekoei River Valley and ǂGi Pan as discussed in the text. Our landscape approach provides a nuanced understanding of these features within the southern African context. The Keimoes kite funnels are most similar to those of the Negev Desert in the Levant, and demonstrate (against long-held opinion) that southern African hunter-gatherers in arid regions intentionally modified their landscape to optimise the harvesting of ungulates such as migrating gazelle-in this case the local, desert-adapted Springbok. We further found that the Keimoes kite landscape was probably one of complex inter-connectedness, with dynamic human land-use patterns interlaced with concepts of inheritable custodianship across generations. We show that all the sites were constructed within 2 km of seasonal water pans, and that elevation relative to the surrounding landscape was key to the placement of the kites. Our results highlight the hunters’ understanding of animal behaviours and migration patterns, and the minimum requirements for funnel construction. We report on a least-cost-path analysis, and use both older and younger ethno-historical and ethno-archaeological observations to help understand possible animal and human interaction with the Keimoes kite landscape. Here we present the recently discovered desert kites of South Africa in terms of landscape-based data derived from LiDAR scanning that enable us to compare the morphometric and topographic characteristics of the individual kite funnels. ![]()
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