I don't know if you saw this piece by the professor who led the team. It provides some good details about the time period (from about 1500-1800). A rough estimate of population (upwards of 850 households, but unclear if all household sites were inhabited at the same time.)

Looking at the first photograph in that site, I notice outlines that look like fences and structures. The layout, to my untrained eye, looks pretty similar to "type N" layout like the klipriviersberg settlement , only repeated several times over. To give you a something of an idea of what that layout might look like as settled, here is a picture of an Ovambo kraal. Now, of course you should realize that the layout will be somewhat different. The Ovambo kraal pictured is in northern Namibia and Southern Angola, several hundred miles away from this newly discovered Tswana site. Additionally, it appears that the Ovambo kraal does not make use of stone foundations for fencing or houses, while the Tswana site does.

here is an ok primer on the history of pre-colonial farming in the region

What is the importance of this site?

As a country, South Africa actually has received a greater amount of archaeological study than anywhere else on the continent except perhaps Olduvai and Egypt.

The region where this site was found has already turned up lots of sites, and to my limited knowledge, the SKBR site resembles the settlement patterns already seen in the region.

The big difference seems to be in terms of scale. In the 1970s, Tim Maggs estimated that these Type N settlements would house up to 1500 people. If the estimate of the SKBR site holds true and there were ~750 or 850 households (potentially meaning a paterfamilias and 1 or more wives, and several children), this SKBR site could have a population much greater than other sites already seen.

In addition to the human population, we need to remember that cattle was an important demonstration of wealth for southern African societies in this era of 1500-1800, and the population of cattle might have surpassed the human population.

All this likely means that Tswana peoples were farming and pasturing the land more intensively than Archaeologists and Historians estimated. Does that mean that the climate was more favorable, or that Tswana peoples had more efficient methods of agriculture and pastoralism than we understood.

The technical aspect of LiDAR is also kind of neat, being able to see patterns in forested areas.

But, as is pretty clear in the article, much of the knowledge about the site is still to be gained, and it will take several years of digging and analysis before we get a full picture of the site.