New optically stimulated luminescence ages, in combination with detailed analysis of sediment from White Paintings rock shelter provide a basis for reconstructing palaeoenvironment and site formation processes at the longest archaeological sequence in the Kalahari. The new data resolve previous ambiguities related to the site’s chronology. A series of soil stratigraphic units documents changing conditions at the site over the past 100/120 ka. Millennialscale periods of increased moisture availability, occupation intensity, and landscape stability alternate with periods characterized by more arid conditions, aeolian sedimentation, and lower site occupation intensity. Broader trends in the sediment data suggest a general transition from greater moisture availability in the Pleistocene and Early to Mid Holocene toward more arid conditions in the Late Holocene. Wetter climates occurred at the time of Heinrich events in the North Atlantic due to slowing or cessation of the North Atlantic Deep Water flow (NADW) that resulted in warming of Southern Hemisphere oceans and the associated weakening of the South Atlantic and South African anticyclones.