Smithfield was one of the two principal labels historically used to classify southern African Later Stone Age assemblages, alongside Wilton. The category was associated especially with inland regions such as the Transvaal, Orange Free State, and northern Cape, although related occurrences were also reported on the Natal and south Cape coasts. Its boundaries were never securely established from complete, dated, stratified assemblages.

Smithfield industries were generally regarded as macrolithic and, apart from the poorly defined “Smithfield C,” as lacking the backed implements characteristic of Wilton. The Transvaal sequence remains difficult to correlate with the better documented sequences farther south. At Heuningneskrans, Smithfield occupation spans the late twelfth to late sixth millennia BC, while a later Smithfield phase at the same broad regional scale is dated to the ninth through eleventh centuries AD.

The later assemblages were marked by a proliferation of cylindrical wooden and bone arrow-points. Comparable macrolithic material at Pietkloof was associated with pottery. The scarcity of reported microlithic aggregates in the Transvaal leaves open the possibility that the macrolithic Smithfield tradition continued through much of the span in which Wilton industries predominated in the Cape, but the chapter presents this as a possibility rather than a demonstrated sequence.