Fig 1.
Map showing the sites mentioned in this study.
Smaller dots represent the main metropolitan areas in the province. Shaded area roughly represents the Tugela River catchment.
Fig 2.
Selection of bone point fragments sampled from Nkupe shelter and KwaGandaganda.
Table 1.
Species identified in the faunal analyses at the eleven sites from KwaZulu-Natal included in this study.
The numbers represent MNI counts, except where only NISP counts were available, in which case and ’X’ marks species presence. Full NISP data (where available) from the sites can be found in S1 Table. In some cases, the taxonomic names have been updated from what appears in the original fauna reports to accommodate most recent scientific parlance.
Table 2.
Showing the number and percentage of bone point fragments sampled for ZooMS analysis.
Table 3.
Complete list of identified peptide markers from the modern comparative material.
Fig 3.
Phylogenetic tree showing southern African representatives of the various tribes and subfamilies of the Bovidae family.
Data taken from Groves and Grubb [105].
Fig 4.
Example of ZooMS collagen peptide mass fingerprint spectra of archaeological Tragelaphini, Alcelaphini and Hippotragini specimens (from top to bottom GH6, MZ5 and MZ2).
Table 4.
Showing the number and percentage of samples from each site that gave positive results.
Table 5.
Showing results of the ZooMS identifications (see Table 3 for a complete list of the identified peptide markers, as well as S1 and S2 Figs for spectra representing Reduncini, buffalo, an otter, an equid, a lagomorph and a giraffe).