[7][8][4] Border Cave's long occupational sequence makes the site an important location for studying prehistoric hunter-gatherer behavior and the causes and timing of the Middle to Later Stone Age transition.

[1][10] Some of the cave's other artifacts (i.e. bone points) have also played into researchers' debates on the origins of hunter-gatherer cultural adaptations and the appropriateness of ethnographic analogy in interpreting the archaeological record.

[2] These rivers also erode certain areas of the Lebombo Mountains and cause differential weathering among the Karoo rocks (i.e. the Stormberg basalts and Ecca shales).

[2][12] Current annual rainfall is approximately 820 millimetres (32 in) at the town Ingwavuma, which is roughly 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) south of Border Cave.

[13] The cave resides in a biodiversity hotspot called the Maputoland Center of Endemism, which has abundant riverine and lowveld vegetation.

[5] Vegetation surveys indicate that the main plants common to Border Cave include Androstachys johnsonii, Acacia spp., Combretum spp., Olea europaea subsp.

[13][5] Rodent and insectivore remains (primarily from Angoni vlei rat, pygmy mouse, and least dwarf shrew) suggest that Border Cave vegetation communities changed multiple times during the Late Pleistocene.

[1] However, he displaced these artifacts and remains from their original context and left his excavated sediment at the site (what some researchers call "Horton's Pit").

[16] Beaumont analyzed the site's stratigraphy (consisting mostly of alternating Brown Sand and White Ash layers)[2] and material culture (particularly the lithics) to a greater degree of detail than previous researchers.

[4] Cooke and colleagues found perforated Conus bairstowi shells with the infant, which likely came from the eastern Cape coast.

[16] Researchers lost BC6 (humerus), BC7 (proximal ulna) and BC8a and BC8b (two metatarsals), and lack adequate provenance information to accurately date these remains.

[5] The burnt charcoal within the grass bedding and alternating stratigraphic layers of brown sand and white ash represent multiple burning events over time.

[23] Raymond Dart uncovered "Middle Stone Age" lithics in his preliminary excavations of Border Cave, though he did not formally analyze them.

[7] A majority of these lithic raw materials were rhyolite or basalt, though quartz, chalcedony, agate and chert also occur within this assemblage.

[24] These points' morphologies (particularly the discoidal ones) are very different from one another, which has led some to believe that there was a lack of planning in lithic reduction strategies.

[7] Border Cave's Middle Stone Age fauna were primarily mammals, though there are a few bird types represented in the assemblage.

[17][8] The most abundant mammals were hares and small-large bovids (i.e. grysbok, oribi, klipspringer, mountain reedbuck, impala, bushbuck, springbok, hartebeest, wildebeest).

[8] Other animals such as bushpig, warthog, chacma baboons, vervet monkeys, honey badges, and Burchell's zebra also occur in the assemblage.

[8] Even more recently excavated faunal material from the MSA layers is heavily fragmented, likely due to taphonomic damage.

[17] Some researchers suggest that this evidence is enough to claim that humans were the main individuals who brought these materials back to the site.

[28] Ostrich eggshell and marine beads, which some suggest as evidence of ornamentation amongst Later Stone Age hunter-gatherer groups,[29] occur in Border Cave's ELSA sequence.

[31] Philip Rightmire on the other hand performed a discriminant analysis on BC1 (adult cranium), which revealed that Border Cave's human remains were similar to modern-day African populations.

[11][36] A point of contention amongst archaeologists is whether Border Cave's organic ELSA artifacts represent the evolution of a San hunter-gatherer culture in southern Africa during the Pleistocene.

[11] In particular, they propose that Border Cave's bone points, digging sticks, bone awls, poison residues, and shell beads are roughly indistinguishable from those of modern San hunter-gatherers, and suggest that Border Cave inhabitants may have used these tools in the same ways as modern San populations.

[11] However, Pargeter and colleagues dispute these claims on the basis that these tools are not uniquely 'San', and occur in the toolkits of other hunter-gatherers as well (i.e. the Mbuti, Inuit, Chumash).

[36][45][46][47][48] Secondarily, Pargeter and colleagues suggest that the function of the Border Cave tools is speculative (i.e. people may have used pointed bones as awls, needles, or projectile points), and that Border Cave's occupants may not have used tools in similar ways to modern San hunter-gatherers.

[28] Paola Villa and colleagues suggest that Border Cave's shift from post-Howiesons Poort technology (blades and retouched points) to bipolar flakes and bladelets indicate the occurrence of the MSA-LSA transition.

[28] This has led Paola Villa and colleagues to believe that Border Cave shows the earliest evidence for the MSA-LSA transition in southern Africa.

[28] Researchers have questioned whether technological changes began at Border Cave and then later spread to other archaeological sites.

[9] Since LSA technology does not occur prior to ~27,000 years BP in localities surrounding Border Cave (i.e. Sibebe in Eswatini, Niassa in Mozambique), some dispute the claim that Border Cave represents a true origin locality for the MSA/LSA transition, and instead propose that shows an independent event of cultural and behavioral change.