1900.56.32

Collection type

Object

Description

'Unworked flake' of light brown stone. [LKG 13/01/2010]

Long description

'Unworked flake' of light brown stone. The stone has a quartz-like sheen. The rock widens out along its length from the proximal end, before narrowing into a flatter distal edge. The dorsal side of the stone is characterised by a slight point nearly at the centre where the arissed edges meet. [LKG 13/01/2010]

Geographical reference

South Africa

Africa > Southern Africa > South Africa

KwaZulu / Natal Umbilo

Person

Field collector John Sanderson

PRM source Anthropological Institute (later Royal Anthropological Institute)

PRM source Royal Anthropological Institute

Date / Period

Date made: Before 1878

Date collected

Between September 1876 and February 1878

Acquisition information

Donated: 1900

Materials and processes

Material Stone, Process Flaked

Dimensions

Length 41 mm, Width 36 mm, Weight 14 g

Object numbers

Accession number: 1900.56.32

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]

Search terms: Tool, Flake