The hyper-arid Namib Desert extends approximately 2000km along the south-western coast of Africa, mainly within Namibia, and reaches up to 200km inland (Figure 1). Almost half of the Namib is a vast erg, or sand sea, with some of the highest dunes on earth (Figure 2). The remainder is a complex array of gravel desert, mountain ranges and ephemeral river systems flanked by narrow ribbons of riparian woodland. Archaeological investigations have been carried out intermittently for almost a century, and the mid-Pleistocene to Holocene sequence is well known in outline (Mitchell 2002).