Ochre dominates the archaeological record at Leopard Cave. The assemblage includes 366 pieces of red ferruginous rock and black iron oxide, plus 15 stone tools dedicated to processing the material. Granite and basalt grinding slabs and handstones bear the telltale red tint in their wear marks, evidence that inhabitants systematically ground raw ochre into fine pigment. The powder found its way onto ostrich eggshell beads and bone ornaments — though whether the color was intentionally decorative or simply transferred through daily handling remains an open question. What is certain is that ochre processing was not casual. Radiocarbon dating and stratigraphic analysis place the activity between 3,500 and 2,000 years before present, spanning roughly fifteen centuries of sustained use at this single site.

Some of the processed ochre went directly onto the cave walls. Both anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures survive, painted in fine-line red monochrome at what would have been eye level for the artists. The paintings are modest compared to the vast galleries found elsewhere in southern Africa, but their connection to the ochre processing happening on the cave floor gives them particular archaeological significance. Leopard Cave is not just a place where rock art exists — it is a place where the entire production chain is visible, from raw stone to ground pigment to finished image. The nearby Fackeltrager site, just 1.7 kilometers to the north, adds to the picture of a landscape rich in Later Stone Age activity. The Erongo Mountains themselves, shaped by Jurassic and Cretaceous volcanic formations, provided both the sheltering overhangs and the raw materials that made habitation possible.

More than a thousand stone tools were recovered from Leopard Cave, the majority crafted from locally available quartz and basalt. A small number of chert tools hint at some connection to distant sources, though their scarcity makes interpretation difficult. Many tools show fire damage, associated with hearths found within the cave's stratigraphic layers. Stone flakes scattered throughout the deposits confirm that tools were made on-site using multiple knapping techniques. Among the more unusual artifacts are "scraper planes" — macrotools with a cutting edge and flat surface whose precise function remains debated. Bone tools round out the toolkit: points and linkshafts for hunting, polished bone fragments whose purpose is less clear. Alongside these practical objects, artisans produced ostrich eggshell beads using at least three distinct manufacturing methods involving varying sequences of drilling and polishing.

The hearths that damaged stone tools also preserved botanical evidence. Charcoal analysis shows that the primary fuel was wood from Senegalia trees, supplemented by a few other local species. Seeds recovered from the deposits belong mainly to inedible local grasses — notable not for what they tell us about diet but for what they suggest about the environment these people inhabited. Five pottery sherds, undecorated and lacking diagnostic features, round out the material record. They remain unstudied, a small mystery within a larger one. Two goat or sheep molars, initially radiocarbon dated to around 2,000 years before present, once made Leopard Cave a candidate for the earliest evidence of pastoralist migration into southern Africa. Later analysis revised that claim, but the cave's richness as a Later Stone Age site is undiminished. What Leopard Cave offers is not a single dramatic discovery but something rarer: a detailed, layered portrait of daily life across centuries of occupation.