Surveys for archaeological sites in the De Hoop Nature Reserve, southern Cape, South Africa resulted in the discovery of a cave complex comprising two locations, Klipdrift Cave and Klipdrift Shelter. Excavations commenced in 2010 with Later Stone Age deposits initially being recovered at the former site and Middle Stone Age deposits at the latter. The lithic component at Klipdrift Shelter is consistent with the Howiesons Poort, a technological complex recorded at a number of archaeological sites in southern Africa. The age for these deposits at Klipdrift Shelter, obtained by single grain optically stimulated luminescence, spans the period 65.5 ± 4.8 ka to 59.4 ± 4.6 ka. Controlled and accurate excavations of the discrete layers have resulted in the recovery of a hominin molar, marine shells, terrestrial fauna, floral remains, organic materials, hearths, lithics, ochre, and ostrich eggshell. More than 95 pieces of the latter, distributed across the layers, are engraved with diverse, abstract patterns. The preliminary results from Klipdrift Shelter presented in this report provide new insights into the Howiesons Poort in this sub-region and contribute further to ongoing knowledge about the complex behaviours of early Homo sapiens in southern Africa. Excavations at the Klipdrift Complex will continue in the future

The Middle Stone Age (MSA) of southern Africa, and in particular its Still Bay and Howiesons Poort lithic traditions, represents a period of dramatic subsistence, cultural, and technological innovation by our species, Homo sapiens. Climate change has frequently been postulated as a primary driver of the appearance of these innovative behaviours, with researchers invoking either climate instability as a reason for the development of buffering mechanisms, or environmentally stable refugia as providing a stable setting for experimentation. Testing these alternative models has proved intractable, however, as existing regional palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental records remain spatially, stratigraphically, and chronologically disconnected from the archaeological record. Here we report high-resolution records of environmental shifts based on stable carbon and oxygen isotopes in ostrich eggshell (OES) fragments, faunal remains, and shellfish assemblages excavated from two key MSA archaeological sequences, Blombos Cave and Klipdrift Shelter. We compare these records with archaeological material remains in the same strata. The results from both sites, spanning the periods 98–73 ka and 72–59 ka, respectively, show significant changes in vegetation, aridity, rainfall seasonality, and sea temperature in the vicinity of the sites during periods of human occupation. While these changes clearly influenced human subsistence strategies, we find that the remarkable cultural and technological innovations seen in the sites cannot be linked directly to climate shifts. Our results demonstrate the need for scale-appropriate, on-site testing of behavioural-environmental links, rather than broader, regional comparisons.