Cosmogenic nuclide burial dating at Penhill Farm: An Earlier Stone Age Acheulean locality in the lower Sundays River Valley, South Africa

Penhill Farm is an Earlier Stone Age (ESA) Acheulean archaeological site located within the southeastern Cape coastal region of South Africa. Although ESA artifacts have been known for this region since the 1950s, limited archaeological work and an inability to date the terrace context sites have prevented understanding the technological progression from the ESA to Middle Stone Age (MSA) and their placement within the Stone Age chronology of South Africa. Here we use cosmogenic ²⁶Al and ¹⁰Be to reveal a two-stage depositional history for a stone tool assemblage recovered from a debris flow deposit, with artifacts dating to ca. 1.1 Ma (million years) incorporated into a debris flow dating to ca. 0.6 Ma, thereby constraining the Penhill Farm Acheulean occupation to the Early Pleistocene.