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The Swartkrans 3D GIS Project

 

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The Lower Pleistocene fossil site of Swartkrans has been excavated periodically since 1948 by Robert Broom and John Robinson and, most recently, by C.K. Brain. This cave site has yielded the single largest sample of the early hominid species Paranthropus robustus, and several specimens referred to as the human ancestor, Homo erectus. Recent excavation was conducted in a meticulous fashion, and has produced an abundance of carefully recorded geological, fossil, and artifact data. More than 20,000 fossils, along with a number of bone and stone tools, were recovered from Members (strata) 1, 2, and 3 alone.

In 1999 the Palaeoanthropology Unit for Research and Exploration at the University of the Witwatersrand in conjunction with Dr Peter Ungar of the  University of Arkansas’ department of Anthropology, recognized the need for a GIS for Swartkrans. UA graduate student Joe Nigro in collaboration with others designed and implemented a innovative 3D mapping system for the site. Details on the effort and Nigro's thesis are available here. The project arose as an exercise in applying recent technological developments to a complex site that had bee previously  excavated. Swartkrans was used as the pilot site to demonstrate how this technology is capable of deriving new or enhanced information from existing data and facilitating current methods of analyses. It was chosen because of its relatively small size due and the existence of meticulously recorded fossil, artifact, and geological data collected during C.K. Brain's excavations.

The specific goals of the project were: 1) to create a system that can assist in further understanding the stratigraphy present at Swartkrans and other cave sites; 2) to create a system that can be used to further explore the relationships between the fossil and artifact distributions of these sites; 3) to realize the implications and constraints of the technology involved in creating such a system; 4) to construct a 3D model of Swartkrans in order to improve the grid-based provenience information of the finds recorded previously; and 5) to reconstruct C.K. Brain's excavation.