scholarly journals Explanations of variability in Middle Stone Age stone tool assemblage composition and raw material use in Eastern Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Blinkhorn ◽  
M. Grove
Keyword(s):  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Population History ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Assemblage Composition

AbstractThe Middle Stone Age (MSA) corresponds to a critical phase in human evolution, overlapping with the earliest emergence of Homo sapiens as well as the expansions of these populations across and beyond Africa. Within the context of growing recognition for a complex and structured population history across the continent, Eastern Africa remains a critical region to explore patterns of behavioural variability due to the large number of well-dated archaeological assemblages compared to other regions. Quantitative studies of the Eastern African MSA record have indicated patterns of behavioural variation across space, time and from different environmental contexts. Here, we examine the nature of these patterns through the use of matrix correlation statistics, exploring whether differences in assemblage composition and raw material use correlate to differences between one another, assemblage age, distance in space, and the geographic and environmental characteristics of the landscapes surrounding MSA sites. Assemblage composition and raw material use correlate most strongly with one another, with site type as well as geographic and environmental variables also identified as having significant correlations to the former, and distance in time and space correlating more strongly with the latter. By combining time and space into a single variable, we are able to show the strong relationship this has with differences in stone tool assemblage composition and raw material use, with significance for exploring the impacts of processes of cultural inheritance on variability in the MSA. A significant, independent role for terrain roughness for explaining variability in stone tool assemblages highlights the importance of considering the impacts of mobility on structuring the archaeological record of the MSA of Eastern Africa.

Middle Stone Age Technologies in Mozambique: A Preliminary Study of the Niassa and Massingir Regions

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuno Bicho ◽  
João Cascalheira ◽  
Jonathan Haws ◽  
Célia Gonçalves
Keyword(s):  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Northern Region ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Lithic Assemblages ◽  
Important Region ◽  
Anatomically Modern Humans ◽  
First Results ◽  
Preliminary Study

Abstract Southeast Africa has become an important region for understanding the development of the Middle Stone Age (MSA) and Anatomically Modern Humans. Due to its location between east and southern Africa, Mozambique is a key region for evaluating the development of Homo sapiens and the MSA across Africa. Here, we present the first results of lithic analyses of MSA assemblages collected during survey and testing in the Niassa and Massingir regions of Mozambique in 2014-2016. We were able to locate close to 200 new Stone Age surface sites. Data show that raw material use is different in the two areas. The lithic assemblages from both areas show the use of centripetal technology, but in Massingir, Levallois points, the respective cores and blade technology are frequent, they are almost absent in the northern region.

Eastern African Stone Age

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yonatan Sahle
Keyword(s):  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Cutting Tools ◽  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Conclusive Evidence ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Heavy Duty ◽  
Technological Tradition ◽  
Late Start

The Stone Age record is longer and better documented in eastern Africa. Archaeological and fossil evidence derives particularly from sites within the Rift Valley of the region, often with secure radiometric age estimates. Despite a relatively late start and disproportionate focus on earlier periods and open-air sites within the rift, scientific research into the region’s Stone Age record continues to play a central role in our understanding of human evolution. Putative stone tools and cutmarked bones from two Late Pliocene (3.6–2.58 million years ago or Ma) contexts are exclusive to eastern Africa, as is conclusive evidence for these by 2.5 Ma. The earliest indisputable technological traces appear in the form of simple flakes and core tools as well as surface-modified bones. It is not clear what triggered this invention, or whether there was a more rudimentary precursor to it. Neither is it certain which hominin lineage started this technology, or if it hunted or only scavenged carcasses. Well-provenienced archaeological occurrences predating 2.0 Ma are limited to sites in Ethiopia and Kenya, becoming more common across eastern Africa and beyond only later. By 1.75 Ma, lithic technologies that included heavy-duty and large cutting tools appeared in Ethiopian and Kenyan localities. Several details about this technological tradition are still inadequately understood, although its appearance in eastern Africa roughly coincides with that of Homo erectus/ergaster. By far the longest-lived Stone Age tradition, hominins with such technologies successfully inhabited high-altitude environments as early as 1.5 Ma, and expanded within and beyond Africaeven earlier. Hunting and use of fire probably started in the earlier part of this technological tradition. Small-sized and highly diverse tool forms gradually and variably started to replace heavy-duty and large cutting tools beginning c. 300 thousand years ago (ka). Conventional wisdom associates this technological and behavioral shift with the rise of Homo sapiens, although the oldest undisputed representatives of our species continued to use large cutting tools in eastern Africa after 200 ka. In addition to small retouched tools, often on products from prepared cores, significant innovations such as hafting and ranged weaponry emerged during the length of this technological tradition. Increasingly complex sociocultural behaviors, including mortuary practices, mark the later part of this period in eastern Africa. The consolidation of such skills and behaviors, besides ecological/demographic dynamics, may have enabled the ultimately decisive Out-of-Africa dispersal of our species, from eastern Africa, 50–80 ka. Even smaller and more diverse stone tool forms and other sociocultural innovations evolved in many areas of eastern Africa by 50 ka. Miniaturization and diversification allowed for the adoption of more complex technologies, including intentional blunting and microlithization. Some of these were used as parts of sophisticated composite implements, such as the bow and arrow. Complex behaviors involving personal ornamentation, symbolism, and rituals that resembled the lifeways of ethnographically known hunter-gatherer populations were similarly adopted. These dynamics eventually led to the development of new technological and socioeconomic systems marked by the inception of agriculture and attendant lifeways.

Chronology of the Acheulean to Middle Stone Age transition in eastern Africa

Science ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 360 (6384) ◽  
pp. 95-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan L. Deino ◽  
Anna K. Behrensmeyer ◽  
Alison S. Brooks ◽  
John E. Yellen ◽  
Warren D. Sharp ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Technological Innovation ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Kenya Rift ◽  
Sedimentary Deposits ◽  
Uranium Series ◽  
Uranium Series Dating

The origin of the Middle Stone Age (MSA) marks the transition from a highly persistent mode of stone toolmaking, the Acheulean, to a period of increasing technological innovation and cultural indicators associated with the evolution ofHomo sapiens. We used argon-40/argon-39 and uranium-series dating to calibrate the chronology of Acheulean and early MSA artifact–rich sedimentary deposits in the Olorgesailie basin, southern Kenya rift. We determined the age of late Acheulean tool assemblages from 615,000 to 499,000 years ago, after which a large technological and faunal transition occurred, with a definitive MSA lacking Acheulean elements beginning most likely by ~320,000 years ago, but at least by 305,000 years ago. These results establish the oldest repository of MSA artifacts in eastern Africa.

Environmental dynamics during the onset of the Middle Stone Age in eastern Africa

Science ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 360 (6384) ◽  
pp. 86-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Potts ◽  
Anna K. Behrensmeyer ◽  
J. Tyler Faith ◽  
Christian A. Tryon ◽  
Alison S. Brooks ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Tectonic Activity ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Stone Material

Development of the African Middle Stone Age (MSA) before 300,000 years ago raises the question of how environmental change influenced the evolution of behaviors characteristic of earlyHomo sapiens. We used temporally well-constrained sedimentological and paleoenvironmental data to investigate environmental dynamics before and after the appearance of the early MSA in the Olorgesailie basin, Kenya. In contrast to the Acheulean archeological record in the same basin, MSA sites are associated with a markedly different faunal community, more pronounced erosion-deposition cycles, tectonic activity, and enhanced wet-dry variability. Aspects of Acheulean technology in this region imply that, as early as 615,000 years ago, greater stone material selectivity and wider resource procurement coincided with an increased pace of land-lake fluctuation, potentially anticipating the adaptability of MSA hominins.

African Maritime Archaeology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Pollard
Keyword(s):  
River Mouth ◽  
Maritime Archaeology ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
Site Formation ◽  
Marine Resources ◽  
Site Formation Processes ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Swahili Coast

The continent of Africa has had a lengthy involvement in global maritime affairs and archaeological research with Middle Stone Age people using marine resources on the coasts of southern Africa, the Classical Pharos lighthouse of Alexandria, and Medieval Indian Ocean trade on the Swahili coast to the Atlantic triangular slave trade. Maritime archaeology is the identification and interpretation of physical traces left by people who use the seas and oceans. Middle Stone Age sites in South Africa such as Klasies River Mouth and Pinnacle Point have the earliest evidence for human use of marine resources including birds, marine mammals, and shellfish. This exploitation of marine resources was also coincident with the use of pigment, probably for symbolic behavior, as well as the production of bladelet stone tool technology. The extensive timespan of human activity on the coast around Africa occurred during changing relative sea levels due to Ice Ages and tectonic movement affecting the location of the coastline relative to maritime archaeological sites. Geomorphological changes may also take place over shorter periods such as the 1909 ce shipwreck of the Eduard Bohlen in Namibia lying c. one and half thousand feet landward of the shoreline. Ancestors of sea-going vessels have been recorded on rivers from dugout canoes excavated at Dufuna in northern Nigeria and the first plank-built boats, such as the Old Kingdom Royal Ship of Cheops of Khufu, found at the Giza pyramids, which imitated the shape of earlier papyrus rafts. Classical documents such as the Periplus Maris Erythraei and Ptolemy’s Geographia record Arabian and Indian trade with eastern Africa including ivory and rhinoceros horn and describe fishing practices using baskets and sewn-hull boats of the inhabitants. The increase in oceanic trade links here during the medieval period encouraged the formation of Swahili port cities such as Kilwa and Mombasa. The former was in a strategic position to manage much of the gold trade between Sofala in Mozambique and the northern Swahili Coast. Portuguese forts, constructed in the 15th and 16th centuries on their trade routes around Africa, such as Elmina Castle in Ghana, Fort Jesus in Mombasa, Kenya, and Fort São Sebastião on Mozambique Island, dominate the ports and harbors. The first sub-Saharan underwater scientific investigations took place in 1976 of the Portuguese frigate Santo Antonio de Tanna that sunk during an Omani siege from 1696 to 1698. At Elmina in West Africa, studies were made of wreck-site formation processes around the 17th-century Dutch West India Company vessel Groeningen, which had caught fire when firing its guns in salute to Elmina Castle after arrival. More broad-based studies that interpret the functioning of the African maritime society in its wider environmental setting, both physically in the context of its religious buildings, harbors, fishing grounds, sailing routes, and shipwrecks, and by taking account of non-material aspects of the beliefs that influence behavior of coastal societies, have led to interpretations of their maritime outlook.

scholarly journals A Spatiotemporally Explicit Paleoenvironmental Framework for the Middle Stone Age of Eastern Africa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Timbrell ◽  
Matt Grove ◽  
Andrea Manica ◽  
Stephen Rucina ◽  
James Blinkhorn
Keyword(s):  
High Resolution ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Climatic Variability ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Marine Isotope Stage ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Mean Annual Temperature ◽  
Stone Age

Abstract Eastern Africa has played a prominent role in debates about human evolution and dispersal due to the presence of rich archaeological, palaeoanthropological and palaeoenvironmental records. However, substantial disconnects occur between the spatial and temporal resolutions of these data that complicate their integration. Here, we apply high-resolution climatic simulations of two key parameters, mean annual temperature and precipitation, and a biome model, to produce a highly refined characterisation of the environments inhabited during the eastern African Middle Stone Age. Occupations are typically found in sub-humid climates and landscapes dominated by or including tropical xerophytic shrubland. Marked expansions from these core landscapes include movement into hotter, low-altitude landscapes in Marine Isotope Stage 5 and cooler, high-altitude landscapes in Marine Isotope Stage 3, with the recurrent inhabitation of ecotones between open and forested habitats. Through our use of high-resolution climate models, we demonstrate a significant independent relationship between past precipitation and patterns of Middle Stone Age stone tool use overlooked by previous studies. Engagement with these models not only enables spatiotemporally explicit examination of climatic variability across Middle Stone Age assemblages in eastern Africa but enables clearer characterisation of the habitats early human populations were adapted to, and how they changed through time.

Long-distance stone transport and pigment use in the earliest Middle Stone Age

Science ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 360 (6384) ◽  
pp. 90-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison S. Brooks ◽  
John E. Yellen ◽  
Richard Potts ◽  
Anna K. Behrensmeyer ◽  
Alan L. Deino ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
Middle Pleistocene ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Red Pigment ◽  
Associated Fauna ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Tool Materials ◽  
Uranium Series

Previous research suggests that the complex symbolic, technological, and socioeconomic behaviors that typifyHomo sapienshad roots in the middle Pleistocene <200,000 years ago, but data bearing on human behavioral origins are limited. We present a series of excavated Middle Stone Age sites from the Olorgesailie basin, southern Kenya, dating from ≥295,000 to ~320,000 years ago by argon-40/argon-39 and uranium-series methods. Hominins at these sites made prepared cores and points, exploited iron-rich rocks to obtain red pigment, and procured stone tool materials from ≥25- to 50-kilometer distances. Associated fauna suggests a broad resource strategy that included large and small prey. These practices imply notable changes in how individuals and groups related to the landscape and to one another and provide documentation relevant to human social and cognitive evolution.

scholarly journals Raw material optimization and stone tool engineering in the Early Stone Age of Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania)

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (162) ◽  
pp. 20190377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alastair Key ◽  
Tomos Proffitt ◽  
Ignacio de la Torre
Keyword(s):  
Functional Performance ◽  
Material Selection ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Cutting Tools ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Stone Tool ◽  
Olduvai Gorge ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Material Optimization ◽  
Early Stone Age

For more than 1.8 million years hominins at Olduvai Gorge were faced with a choice: whether to use lavas, quartzite or chert to produce stone tools. All are available locally and all are suitable for stone tool production. Using controlled cutting tests and fracture mechanics theory we examine raw material selection decisions throughout Olduvai's Early Stone Age. We quantify the force, work and material deformation required by each stone type when cutting, before using these data to compare edge sharpness and durability. Significant differences are identified, confirming performance to depend on raw material choice. When combined with artefact data, we demonstrate that Early Stone Age hominins optimized raw material choices based on functional performance characteristics. Doing so flexibly: choosing raw materials dependent on their sharpness and durability, alongside a tool's loading potential and anticipated use-life. In this way, we demonstrate that early lithic artefacts at Olduvai Gorge were engineered to be functionally optimized cutting tools.

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