New data and ideas on the foraging behaviour of Early Stone Age hominids at Swartkrans Cave, South Africa

New data and Interpretations presented in this paper update and augment the previous state of knowledge of early hominid subsistence behaviour at Swartkrans Cave during the formation of the Member 3 depositional unit (c. 1.0 million years 8g0). Unlike previous reconstructions of passive scavenging by early Pleistocene hom In ids In the Sterkfontein Valley. our new data lead to an Inference of early access by hominids to the carcasses of variously sized ungulates. Early access, In turn, suggests Swartkrans hominids might have possessed the capabilities to hunt and/or scavenge aggressively from primary carnivore predators by c. 1.0 Myr, a pattern that is also increasingly apparent In the penecontemporaneous archaeological record of other parts of Africa