Peter Beaumont 1935 – 31 Aug 2016
PETER Beaumont, the renowned South African archaeologist, has died in the city, aged 80.
Beaumont retired from the McGregor Museum nearly sixteen years ago, having joined the staff in 1978. His Kimberley-based research drew international interest to the archaeology of the Northern Cape, and his legacy consists in part in ongoing research programmes at Wonderwerk Cave, Kathu, and Canteen Kopje.
Professor Michael Chazan, co-director of current research at Wonderwerk, says: “Peter Beaumont established the Northern Cape as a premiere palaeo-science region in Africa.” Where Beaumont left off would ‘keep researchers busy for generations’, he added.
Beaumont worked previously under Professor Raymond Dart at the Bernard Price Institute at Wits University and from there had excavated Border Cave, finding the earliest unambiguous evidence for modern human behaviour, at some 44 000 years ago. His findings were recently corroborated and amplified by a team applying multiple methods of analysis, published to international acclaim in 2012, with Beaumont as a co-author.
It was an interest in ancient mining which at first had brought Beaumont to the Northern Cape, where he excavated precolonial ochre mines near Postmasburg. Major projects followed to excavate and date archaeological and past climate sequences at Wonderwerk Cave, sites around Kathu, an ancient hyaena maternity den called Equus Cave at Taung, and sites along the Vaal River including Pniel and Canteen Kopje. This research formed part of his Northern Cape Pleistocene Project which was funded by the HSRC and the Anglo-American and De Beers Chairman’s Fund.
A focus on later periods of prehistory included a survey of Later Stone Age ceramic traditions across the Province and efforts to date the archaeological contexts of rock art.
In an era when archaeology was becoming a multi-specialist endeavour, Beaumont engaged with palynologists (study of ancient pollen), sedimentologists, and, particularly dating experts. With his close friend, the late Dr John Vogel, he published key early papers extending South Africa’s Pleistocene chronology, and together they attracted a range of international researchers applying ground-breaking techniques to samples from Northern Cape sites and Border Cave.
Beaumont contributed to the upsetting of an old view, that South Africa was a prehistoric cul-de-sac into which Stone Age cultures had migrated from elsewhere. As far back as 1978 he was arguing for the genesis of our species in this subcontinent and the dispersal of precocious Stone Age technology and cultural behaviours from here to the world beyond.
Amongst discoveries made was exceptionally early evidence for use of fire by human ancestors at Wonderwerk Cave. A decade later new DNA-based studies gave independent support for his prescient line of thinking and he correctly predicted the subsequent florescence of studies in Southern African Pleistocene archaeology, which for years had been pursued by a small minority of local archaeologists.
Beaumont promoted public interest in archaeology through talks and museum exhibits, including involvement in creating the 1989 television series, Origins: the Southern Evidence. He was instrumental in opening Wonderwerk Cave and Canteen Kopje as public sites with displays for schools and tourists.
Nicky and Strilli Oppenheimer took a personal interest in his work, while the King and Queen of Sweden invited him to address the Travellers Club of Stockholm after meeting him at Rooipoort. Amongst celebrities who met with Beaumont was Hollywood star Val Kilmer who travelled to Kimberley to learn from him of his work with Adrian Boshier, the legendary central figure in Lyall Watson’s “Lightning Bird”.
Beaumont was elected president of the South African Society for Quaternary Research in 1995, and Vice-President of the international INQUA congress that was hosted by South Africa in 1999.
Beaumont grew up in Cape Town and was a student under AJH Goodwin at the University of Cape Town. He later researched a Master’s thesis based on his excavations and analysis of Border Cave.
He is survived by his son Bruce and daughter Megan.
Colleagues, friends and acquaintances have paid tribute and recalled “wonderful memories”. He is remembered by museum staff for his humanity, his penetrating insights into issues of the day, and perhaps above all for his wonderful sense of humour and big infectious laugh.
Professor Chazan: “On a personal note, his boundless enthusiasm was contagious and inspirational.”
Anne Rogers remarked on his “willingness to share his views and knowledge with people from all walks of life”.
Niles Namusa: “I came to know him well while working at Wonderwerk Cave … He taught me that it is very important to know the history of a place that you are from. We will always remember him as a great story teller.”
Steven Walker, a PhD student involved in research at Kathu: “The breadth and depth of Peter Beaumont’s contribution to archaeological knowledge and to the heritage of South Africa is beyond measure. The sites he identified and excavated in the Northern Cape have yielded profound and enlightening discoveries about how our ancestors lived.”
Sephai Mngqolo of the McGregor Museum, who worked alongside Beaumont from 1980: “I was fortunate to be under the tutelage of this great man. He will be sadly missed.” David Morris, McGregor Museum