Professor Lyn Wadley is Honorary Professor of Archaeology in the Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), South Africa. She directs a University of the Witwatersrand (Wits)-recognised research programme called ACACIA (Ancient Cognition and Culture in Africa). She taught archaeology in the Archaeology Department, GAES, from 1982 until her retirement at the end of 2004. The National Research Foundation awarded her an A2-rating awarded in 2011 and an A1 rating in 2017. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of South Africa, and a member of Society of Africanist Archaeologists (SAFA), Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), CARTA, Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists (ASAPA) and Southern African Association for Quaternary Research (SASQUA). She is an editorial board member for: South African Journal of Science, South African Journal of Archaeology, Southern African Humanities, Journal of African Archaeology, Journal of Anthropological Research, and Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Urgeschichte.
Her speciality is the African Stone Age: Middle Stone Age (which lasted from approximately 300,000 to 25,000 years ago) and Later Stone Age (the last 25,000 years). She began her archaeological career researching social and ecological issues during the past 25,000 years of the Later Stone Age in southern Africa. Data for her interpretations were obtained from sites in Namibia and South Africa. In particular, her Later Stone Age research centred on demographic mobility. She directed excavations at a suite of Holocene sites in the Magaliesberg (including Jubilee Shelter and Cave James), and subsequently spent eleven years excavating Rose Cottage Cave in the eastern Free State. Rose Cottage has a long, but discontinuous cultural sequence, beginning with Middle Stone Age dated almost 100,000 years ago and ending with recent Later Stone Age, about 500 years ago. She is best known for her Middle Stone Age excavations in the rock shelter, Sibudu, KwaZulu-Natal, between 1998 and 2011. This site has exceptional organic preservation. Final Middle Stone Age occupations of about 38,000 years ago are at the top of the sequence and the site has been excavated into deep layers with an age of approximately 77,000 years ago. The earliest occupations have not yet been reached. By 2021, Sibudu was the subject of over 120 peer-reviewed scientific papers, many of which are authored or co-authored by international collaborators. Lyn Wadley is now part of the team re-excavating Border Cave in KwaZulu-Natal and here she is concentrating on analysis of botanical remains. Amongst the novel data from the site is the oldest known evidence for plant bedding, and the collection and exploitation of edible Hypoxis rhizomes. Her most recent excavations in 2020 and 2021 have been in rock shelters in the Waterberg, Limpopo Province, where there is a curious occupation hiatus between the Middle and Later Stone Age.
Prof Wadley’s current research is dedicated to the cognition of people who lived in the Middle Stone Age. She has conducted many experiments in order to replicate activities observed in the Middle Stone Age. This work includes heat treatment of rocks and minerals, ochre and seeds, and hafting of stone tools with compound adhesives made from natural products like powdered ochre and plant gum. Such replications enable interpretations of the cognitive abilities of people who used the various technologies. Many daily activities of people in the past are appropriate proxies for cognitive attributes.
