Blombos Cave is an archaeological site located in , about 300 km east of on the Southern Cape coastline,. The cave contains MSA deposits currently dated at between c. The cave site was first excavated in 1991 and field work has been conducted there on a regular basis since 1997, and is ongoing. Blombos Cave This article needs additional citations for. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. September 2018 The excavations at Blombos Cave have yielded important new information on the behavioural evolution of. The archaeological record from this cave site has been central in the ongoing debate on the cognitive and cultural origin of early humans and to the current understanding of when and where key behavioural innovations emerged among Homo sapiens in southern Africa during the. Archaeological material and faunal remains recovered from the phase in Blombos Cave — dated to ca. The most informative archaeological material from Blombos Cave includes engraved , engraved bone ochre processing kits, marine shell , refined bone and stone tools and a broad range of terrestrial and marine faunal remains, including shellfish, birds, tortoise and ostrich egg shell and mammals of various sizes. These findings, together with subsequent re-analysis and excavation of other Middle Stone Age sites in southern Africa, have resulted in a paradigm shift with regard to the understanding of the timing and location of the development of modern human behaviour. On 29 May 2015 formally protected the site as a. Henshilwood's 1995 doctoral thesis. Blombos Cave was originally one of nine sites that Henshilwood excavated and it was first given the acronym GSF8 Garcia State Forest, site no. In 1997 GSF8 was renamed Blombos Cave and given its current acronym: BBC. From 1999 to 2011 in total ten field seasons, each six weeks long, have been carried out at the cave site. From the initial excavations conducted in the early 1990s, the Blombos Cave project has adopted and established new and innovative research agendas in the study of southern African prehistory. While Henshilwood's initial, doctoral research was directed towards the more recent Later Stone Age occupation levels, the focus since 1997 has been on the sequence. The Blombos Cave project has since then developed academically, economically and administratively, from being a local and small-scale test excavation to becoming an international, full scale, high-technological archaeological project. In 2010—2015 the cave site was the focus of the multi-disciplinary, pan-continental research program, the TRACSYMBOLS project. It was led by Professor Christopher S. Henshilwood based at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion at the and the , South Africa, together with Professor Francesco d'Errico from the , France. From 2017 the cave site continues to be excavated by many of the same researchers under the newly funded Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour SapienCE at the University of Bergen, Norway. The Centre is formed in cooperation with Witwatersrand University, Royal Holloway University of Londn, Université de Bordeaux, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen and UNI research, Bergen, Norway. The aim is to follow an even broader multi-disciplinary approach, and the 10-year programme include cognitive studies, neuroscience, geoscience, climate modelling and reconstruction, fauna etc. The cave is situated in a south-facing cliff face 34. The cave formation is set in calcretes of the Wankoe Formation, and the geological setting indicates that the cave was formed by wave action sometime during the. The interior of Blombos Cave comprises a single main chamber, and the entire accessible interior cave floor is about 39m² behind the drip line. West of the cave's main chamber, anthropogenic deposit extends inwardly 3-5 meter. In this area, however, the cave ceiling lowers to a point where it falls in level with the surface, preventing access to the deposit beneath. In the area north-east of the main chamber, deposit expands into a low laying ante-chamber of unknown extent due to the sand filling it. By the end of the 2011 field season about 19. Blombos Cave's outer talus forms a gently sloping platform of about 23m² that extends 4-5 meter southwards, before the terrain abruptly drops down towards shoreline that lies some 34,5 meters below the cave entrance. The talus, which primarily consists of Middle Stone Age deposit, rock fall and unconsolidated sediments, is stabilised by an area of large, exposed blocks 14m². At some stage - and in between the prehistoric occupation of the cave site - these blocks have fallen down from the rock face above, effectively preventing site erosion and allowing sediments to stabilize and accumulate in front of the cave's drip line. Calcium carbonate CaCO3 rich ground water seeps in from the cave roof and percolates through the interior sediments, resulting in an alkaline environment with good preservation conditions. The excavated Middle Stone Age deposit in Blombos Cave consists of aeolian wind-borne dune sand, blown in through the cave entrance, and roof spall from the cave ceiling. Intermixed with these sandy matrixes are decomposed marine and terrestrial faunal remains fish, shell fish, egg shell and animal bones and