The archaeology of the Metolong Dam, Lesotho: past knowledge, present research, future implications.

The Metolong Dam will flood a 14 km stretch of Lesotho’s Phuthiatsana Valley, destroying a series of archaeological sites. Many of the rock paintings in the affected area were recorded three decades ago by Lucas Smits’ ARAL Project, while in 1989 test excavations were undertaken at the two largest large rockshelters, Ha Makotoko and Ntloana Tsoana, as part of a larger study of hunter-gatherer settlement and subsistence strategies in western Lesotho (Mitchell 2000). Funded by the Metolong Authority and the World Bank, new fieldwork aims to mitigate the dam’s impact on the local archaeological record by more intensive and comprehensive investigations of surface, sub-surface and parietal archives. This paper, to be considered alongside those of Charles Arthur and Moleboheng Mohapi, sets out the results achieved from the 1989 excavations and assesses Metolong’s wider significance for southern African prehistory. Of particular importance are the long sequence of MSA assemblages spanning Marine Isotope Stage 3 at Ntloana Tsoana and the highly resolved deposits with good organic preservation dating to the Pleistocene/Holocene transition both there and at Ha Makotoko. Preliminary results of the recent re-excavation of these two sites are reported and plans for future palaeoenvironmental and archaeological analyses outlined.