Wonderwerk Cave, located in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa, is an archaeological treasure that preserves a record of human activity spanning almost two million years. The Wonderwerk Cave Research Project is an international collaboration brought together to explore this spectacular site as well as other, early archaeological sites in the region including those around the town of Kathu and the Hutton Sands at Canteen Kopje on the Vaal River.

Wonderwerk Cave, within a servitude ceded to the McGregor Museum, was declared a National Monument of South Africa in 1993. It was opened to the public, as a site museum, in 1993. In the same year a major graffiti-removal project was carried out. In 2000 new legislation made the site a Provincial Heritage Site. Between 2003 and 2009 it was assessed in terms of the grading system prescribed by the National Heritage Resources Act and graded as a Grade I site (i.e.: of national significance). Declaration as a National Heritage Site followed, being published in the Government Gazette on 12 March 2010.Coupled in a serial nomination with Border Cave and Klasies River Mouth for South Africa’s Tentative List for World Heritage inscription, it was re-nominated in its own right for the Tentative List in April 2009.

Wonderwerk Cave was one of the 100 sites selected for the 2010 World Monuments Watch by the World Monuments Fund

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