The ‘Sand-Bath’ and Lithic Heat Treatment in the South African Middle Stone Age: Myth or Reality?

Storage of symbolic information outside the human brain is accepted here as the first undisputed evidence for cultural modernity. In the hunter-gatherer context of the Stone Age this storage could include artwork, rapidly changing artefact styles and organized spatial layout of campsites. Modern human behaviour in this context is distinguished by a symbolic use of space and material culture to define social relationships, including significant groupings based on attributes such as kinship, gender, age or skill. Symbolism maintains, negotiates, legitimizes and transmits such relationships. It is argued here that artefacts are not inherently imbued with symbolism and that modern human culture cannot be automatically inferred from inventories of archaeologically recovered material culture. Evidence for the out-of-brain storage of symbolism in southern African sites first appears in the final phase of the Middle Stone Age at about 40,000 years ago.

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Re-examining the South African Middle-to-Later Stone Age transition: Multivariate analysis of the Umhlatuzana and Rose Cottage Cave stone tool assemblages

Azania Archaeological Research in Africa ◽

10.1080/00672700903337519 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 44 (3) ◽

pp. 311-330 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Grant S. McCall ◽

Jonathan T. Thomas

Keyword(s):

Multivariate Analysis ◽

South African ◽

Stone Tool ◽

Stone Age ◽

Later Stone Age ◽

The South

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A Southern African Perspective on the Contribution of Charcoal Analyses to Archaeology

10.1093/acrefore/9780190854584.013.257 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Joseph Chikumbirike ◽

Marion K. Bamford

Keyword(s):

South African ◽

Iron Age ◽

Southern Africa ◽

Woody Species ◽

Middle Stone Age ◽

Stone Age ◽

Late Stone Age ◽

Climate Reconstructions ◽

Medicinal Use ◽

African Perspective

Southern Africa has a long and rich archaeological record, ranging from the Oldowan lithics in the Sterkfontein valley and Wonderwerk Cave (about 2 Ma) to Iron Age smelting (less than one thousand years ago) in Zimbabwe. A brief overview of charcoal analyses indicates applications in such areas as dating, vegetation and climate reconstructions, fuel use, medicinal use, and the interpretation of human behavior. Some of the research done in the 20th century mainly focused on charcoal for the purpose of dating, but this has diversified in the 21st century to include other applications. The focus is on South African sites, but research from Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe is included. Southern Africa has a very diverse woody component with more than fifteen hundred species from a flora of more than twenty-five thousand species so the establishment of regional modern reference collections of charcoalified woods has been instrumental in improving identifications of the archaeological taxa. Early Middle Stone Age charcoal records show that a diversity of woody species was burned. By Middle Stone Age times, records show the selection of woods for fuel, tinder, and medicinal use as well as cooking of starchy rhizomes. Late Stone Age and Iron Age records, in addition, show the use of woods for smelting and intense fires.

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