Ostrich Egg-Shell Flasks and Soapstone Objects from the Gordonia District, North-Western Cape

Modification of ostrich eggs by carnivores and its bearing on the interpretation of archaeological and paleontological finds

“…Most of the measured apertures range from 10-15 mm ( Table 2) (cf. [20,29,30]) and were manufactured using one or possibly a combination of techniques: drilling, punching, grinding or hammering. Although it is possible to perforate the broad end of an ostrich egg to create a container, this design seems less practical and is not reported.…”

“…A less common variant is a flask with an aperture in the middle of its side [25,29]. The least frequent "mid-way" variant, perforated between the end and side, is described from the Northern Cape by Rudner [30] and Morris and von Bezing [27].…”

“…[2,3,20,32,33]). Alternate uses for storage are documented by the presence of ground specularite [15,21,30], fragments of ostrich eggshell [31] or ant larvae [2] found inside the containers. Broken eggshell flasks were recycled into OES beads and pendants [20,32].…”

“…Thus, about half of the apertures overlap the reported range of OES flasks described in the archaeological literature (cf. [25,29,30]). …”

“…AMS-dating of one of these fragments yielded a result of 775 40 BP (KIA-17759), while three other refitting fragments (Fig. 4d [12,25,26,30]), double-holed flasks are virtually undocumented [29] and MSA flasks are rare [14,40]; Poggenpoel, pers. comm.).…”