Pancho's Kitchen Midden is located under a small rocky overhang about 35 meters above sea level off Eland's Bay in the Western Cape region of South Africa. The overhang opening has a roughly triangular shape, with a base of 5.5 meters across and a dripline of 4-2 meters from the wall. The ceiling is 2.5 meters high at its highest.

Pancho's Kitchen Midden's archaeological deposits are made up of seven stratigraphic layers of relatively dense shell midden, dated between 3570-570 BP.


While not by definition a megamidden, PKM is roughly contemporaneous with megamidden period sites such as Steenbokfontein Cave.

Artifact Assemblage at Pancho's Kitchen Midden

In addition to shell, the midden's faunal assemblage includes a variety of vertebrates and invertebrates, including tortoise, mammal, bird, fish, and crayfish. Worked artifacts include unfinished ostrich eggshell beads, finished beads and pendants. A few nodules of ochre and varying densities of pigment were identified in the various layers. Stone tools are rare; but both worked bone and shell are in evidence, including Donax type scrapers made from limpet shell.

Based on artifact densities, Jerardino argues that Pancho's Kitchen Midden was occupied most intensively during the megamidden period between 3100 and 2600 BP.

Pancho's Kitchen Midden was excavated in the early 1990s, by a team led by Antonieta Jerardino of the University of Cape Town, who admits that she named the site after a restaurant in Cape Town where she visited during her PhD studies.

Sources

Jerardino A. 1998. Excavations at Pancho's Kitchen Midden, Western Cape Coast, South Africa: Further Observations into the Megamidden Period.The South African Archaeological Bulletin 53(167):16-25.