A Master Catalogue: Holocene Human Skeletons from South Africa

South Africa has an archaeological wealth that stretches back over two million years of human pre-history. Part of that wealth is the hard evidence of the people themselves in the form of human skeletal remains. Also present in large numbers are the skeletal remains of the Holocene ancestors of the living human populations of southern Africa. The emphasis of scholarly research in this field has shifted substantially since the 1920s and 1930s when the finds were first made and documented, through the typological classifications of the 1940s which focused largely on the racial classification of specimens. Recent studies focus more narrowly on specific situations in place and time and attempt to draw together biological, archaeological and behavioural data to form a picture of the lifestyles and health of past populations. The common need of recent research has been for detailed documentation of the archaeological context and precise dating of the skeletons. Morris's comprehensive catalogue, the first to focus exclusively on South Africa, makes this data available to researchers in an accessible form, and should prove an invaluable reference work for scholars of anthropology and archaeology.