Spatiotemporal distribution, demography and treatments of South African bored-stone burials and their link to rainwork

In South Africa bored-stone burials occur since at least about 6000 years ago. They therefore originated during the Holocene Later Stone Age for which genetic research shows a relatively large, stable and connected hunter-gatherer population. This paper presents for the first time all the known South African bored-stone burials (N = 38), with as much accompanying data as it was possible to assemble in terms of dating, location, demography and grave treatments. The results demonstrate that bored-stone burials were not limited to the hunter-gatherers of the Later Stone Age but continued into pastoralist and farmer contexts and that they may have coincided with dry spells. They occurred in almost all South African biomes and their pre-2000 BP distribution largely overlaps with that of current Tuu-speaker descendants — a language group to which the /Xam belong/ed. In bona fide hunter-gatherer graves pre-dating 2000 BP, both adult women and men were buried with bored stones, but few such burials are known for children and adolescents. When considering the possible meaning of these burials a recurring theme seems to be a nexus between communication with the spiritworld and rainwork.