1900.56.5

Collection type

Object

Description

'Large implement of rough Chellean type.' [LKG 13/01/2010]

Long description

'Large implement of rough Chellean type.' A dark brown stone with a scar plain on the ventral side which is coloured with red-brown and dark brown stone and which slants down and away from the main flat plain of the stone. The rock as a whole is wedge shaped,tapering from a broad lengthwise edge to a lengthwise point. On its dorsal side the rock has a central ariss which runs along roughly half the length of the stone before splitting into a pair of arisses which respectively run diagonally to each corner. There is a distinctive white vein in the centre of the stone on the dorsal side. [LKG 13/01/2010]

Geographical reference

South Africa

Africa > Southern Africa > South Africa

KwaZulu / Natal Nottingham Road

Person

Field collector John Sanderson

PRM source Anthropological Institute (later Royal Anthropological Institute)

PRM source Royal Anthropological Institute

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1878 Archaeological period: Stone Age

Date collected

Between September 1876 and February 1878

Acquisition information

Donated: 1900

Materials and processes

Material Stone

Dimensions

Width 112 mm, Length 163 mm, Weight 594 g

Object numbers

Accession number: 1900.56.5

Associated publications

As well as exhibiting his collection at the Anthropological Institute on 26 February 1878, Sanderson also gave a paper about the collection; see 'Notes in Connection with Stone Implements rom Natal [a paper read by the author at a Meeting of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland on 26 February 1878]', by John Sanderson, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, Vol. VIII (1879), pp. 15-21. [JC 17 1 2002] Referred to on page 24 of 'Stone Age Sub-Saharan Africa', by Peter Mitchell, in World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum: A Characterization, edited by Dan Hicks and Alice Stevenson (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2013), pp. 16-34. Mitchell writes: ‘Another early collection comprises the 40 stone artefacts (and 2 potsherds) collected or acquired by John Sanderson (principally in KwaZulu-Natal), exhibited by him to the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1878 (Sanderson 1878 [see above reference]) and donated by it in 1900 (1900.56.1-53). This is, in fact, the only 19th-century southern African Stone Age collection in the PRM that appears to have been exhibited to a British learned society, creating a sharp contrast with the origin of much of the British Museum's material of the same kind, much of which was acquired after first being displayed and discussed at meetings of the Royal Anthropological Institute or the Society of Antiquities (Mitchell 2002a [catalogue of the southern African Stone Age collections of the British Museum. London British Museum (British Museum Occasional Papers 108, with contributions from A. Roberts, A. Cohen and K. Perkins).]’. [MJD 14/11/2014]

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