Kuumbi Cave (Trench 10, Phase 4)
Basic information
Sample name: Kuumbi Cave (Trench 10, Phase 4)

Reference: M. E. Prendergast, H. Rouby, P. Punnwong, R. Marchant, A. Crowther, N. Kourampas, C. Shipton, M. Walsh, K. Lambeck, and N. L. Boivin. 2016. Continental island formation and the archaeology of defaunation on Zanzibar, eastern Africa. PloS One 11(2):e0149565 [ER 3773]
Geography
Country: Tanzania

State: Zanzibar


Coordinate: 6° 21' 40" S, 39° 32' 33" E
Coordinate basis: stated in text

Time interval: Late Pleistocene

Section: 3773

Unit number: 4

Unit order: above to below

Ma: 0.016656

Age basis: radiocarbon (uncalibrated)

Geography comments: "Kuumbi Cave is located in Kusini District, in the Unguja South Region of Tanzania. It is located near the southeastern coast of Unguja Island, part of the semi-autonomous province of Zanzibar, c. 2.5 km from the present day shoreline".
"Charcoal from Phase 4 is dated to 16,656 ± 56 BP (c. 20,240 to 19,880 cal. BP)".

Environment
Lithology: limestone

Taphonomic context: cave

Habitat comments: "Kuumbi is a large solutional cave, one of several in a series of Pleistocene-era marine terraces on limestone. Five main phases were identfied in the main trench: Phase 1a contains large limestone lithics and Swahili ceramics; Phase 1b contains the same lithics and earlier Tana Tradition/Triangular Incised Ware ceramics; Phase 2 does not contain any ceramics but includes Later Stone Age (LSA) bone projectile points and other bone tools and a quartz microlithic industry; Phase 3 contains similar LSA quartz and bone technologies; Phase 4 does not bear any unambiguous evidence of human occupation, but it does contain faunal remains, a few of which are burned".

Methods
Life forms: bats,carnivores,primates,rodents,ungulates,other large mammals

Sampling methods: quarry,screenwash

Sample size: 65 specimens

Years: 2012

Sampling comments: "Four trenches were excavated in Kuumbi Cave during the Sealinks field season in 2012: Trench 10 was located in the upper main chamber. All deposits from Trench 10 were dry-sieved on site using 3 mm mesh, except for sub-samples of between 7–60L per context; these were bagged separately and processed by flotation to recover archaeobotanical remains and subsequently wet-sieved through 1mm mesh. The wet- and dry-sieved faunal samples (excluding land and marine molluscs and fish) were included in the analysis, for a total of 17.6 kg of tetrapod faunal remains".

Metadata
Sample number: 4056

Contributor: Benjamin Carter

Enterer: Benjamin Carter

Created: 2023-02-16 11:49:42

Modified: 2023-05-30 03:42:24

Abundance distribution
12 species
3 singletons
total count 65
geometric series index: 23.0
Fisher's α: 4.325
geometric series k: 0.7463
Hurlbert's PIE: 0.7796
Shannon's H: 1.9081
Good's u: 0.9557
Each square represents a species. Square sizes are proportional to counts.
Register
Nesotragus moschatus23.7 kg browser
Philantomba monticola44.3 kg frugivore-folivore
"Cephalophus monticola"
Redunca cf. redunca144 kg grazer
also 42 Bovidae indet.
Potamochoerus larvatus238 kg grazer-browser
also 1 Suidae indet.
Panthera pardus533 kg carnivore
Ichneumia cf. albicauda13.4 kg invertivore-carnivore
Pteropodidae indet.14
Dendrohyrax validus25
Equus quagga burchellii2279 kg grazer
cf.
Cercopithecidae indet.6
Paragalago zanzibaricus2
"Galago zanzibaricus"
Cricetomys gambianus11.4 kg frugivore-granivore
also 17 Rodentia indet.