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Fifty years ago, in 1921, Dr. J. Hewitt published a report on excavations at a rock shelter and a cave on the farm Wilton near Alicedale in the eastern Cape (Hewitt, 1921). The data from these sites later formed the basis of the type description of the Wilton Culture, the term superseding Pygmy Culture (Goodwin, 1929: 251). The Wilton Culture was recognized as a major cultural entity in the youngest division of the palaeolithic sequence in South Africa, the Later Stone Age, and in succeeding years has been adopted for typologically similar aggregates further afield in central and east Africa.

Of the two sites, the Wilton Cave, simply a deeper shelter, contained a thin floor deposit which was stripped out in 1921 or later, while the Wilton Large Rock Shelter contained a deeper deposit. In 1966-67 a section of in situ deposit was excavated at the latter site and the results are given in this paper.