scholarly journals A West African Middle Stone Age site dated to the beginning of MIS 5: Archaeology, chronology, and paleoenvironment of the Ravin Blanc I (eastern Senegal)

2021 ◽  
Vol 154 ◽  
pp. 102952
Author(s):  
Katja Douze ◽  
Laurent Lespez ◽  
Michel Rasse ◽  
Chantal Tribolo ◽  
Aline Garnier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
West African ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Mis 5

The Cyrenaican Prehistory Project 2012: the sixth season of excavations in the Haua Fteah cave

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 113-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Rabett ◽  
Lucy Farr ◽  
Evan Hill ◽  
Chris Hunt ◽  
Ross Lane ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Seismic Event ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Arid Environments ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Late Stone Age ◽  
Climatic Regime ◽  
Molluscan Fauna ◽  
Trench Area ◽  
Mis 5 ◽  
Deep Sounding

AbstractThe paper reports on the sixth season of fieldwork of the Cyrenaican Prehistory Project (CPP) undertaken in September 2012. As in the spring 2012 season, work focussed on the Haua Fteah cave and on studies of materials excavated in previous seasons, with no fieldwork undertaken elsewhere in the Gebel Akhdar. An important discovery, in a sounding excavated below the base of McBurney's 1955 Deep Sounding (Trench S), is of a rockfall or roof collapse conceivably dating to the cold climatic regime of Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 6 (globally dated to c. 190–130 ka) but more likely the result of a seismic event within MIS 5 (globally dated to c. 130–80 ka). The sediments and associated molluscan fauna in Trench S and in Trench D, a trench being cut down the side of the Deep Sounding, indicate that this part of the cave was at least seasonally waterlogged during the accumulation, probably during MIS 5, of the ~6.5 m of sediment cut through by the Deep Sounding. Evidence for human frequentation of the cave in this period is more or less visible depending on how close the trench area was to standing water as it fluctuated through time. Trench M, the trench being cut down the side of McBurney's Middle Trench, has now reached the depth of the latest Middle Stone Age or Middle Palaeolithic (Levalloiso-Mousterian) industries. The preliminary indications from its excavation are that the transition from the Levalloiso-Mousterian to the blade-based Upper Palaeolithic or Late Stone Age Dabban industry was complex and perhaps protracted, at a time when the climate was oscillating between warm-stage stable environmental conditions and colder and more arid environments. The estimated age of the sediments, c. 50–40 ka, places these oscillations within the earlier part of MIS 3 (globally dated to 60–24 ka), when global climates experienced rapid fluctuations as part of an overall trend to increasing aridity and cold.

scholarly journals Middle Stone Age Bifacial Technology and Pressure Flaking at the MIS 3 Site of Toumboura III, Eastern Senegal

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viola C. Schmid ◽  
Katja Douze ◽  
Chantal Tribolo ◽  
Maria Lorenzo Martinez ◽  
Michel Rasse ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
West African ◽  
Population History ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Cultural Expression ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Mis 3 ◽  
Lithic Assemblage ◽  
Technological Analysis

AbstractOver the past decade, the increasing wealth of new archaeological data on the Middle Stone Age (MSA) in Senegal and Mali has broadened our understanding of West Africa’s contributions to cultural developments. Within the West African sequence, the phase of Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS 3, ca. 59-24 ka) yielded so far the best known and extensive archaeological information. The site of Toumboura III encompasses an occupation dated by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) to between 40 ± 3 ka and 30 ± 3 ka. It provides the largest, well-dated, and stratified lithic assemblage in West Africa for the MSA and sheds light on an unprecedented cultural expression for this period, adding to the notable diversity of the late MSA in this region. We conducted a technological analysis of the lithic components following the chaîne opératoire approach. The lithic assemblage features a prevalence of bifacial technology and the exploitation of flakes as blanks for tool production. The craftspeople manufactured distinct types of bifacial tools, including small bifacial points shaped by pressure technique. The new data from Toumboura III demonstrate behavioral patterns that are entirely new in the region. By revealing behavioral innovations and technological particularities, these results on the techno-cultural dynamics during the MIS 3 phase of the MSA enhance our understanding of the complex Pleistocene population history in this part of Africa.

scholarly journals The Stone Age Archaeology of West Africa

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleanor Scerri
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
West African ◽  
Middle Pleistocene ◽  
Wild Food ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Ecological Zones

In the early 21st century, understanding West Africa’s Stone Age past has increasingly transcended its colonial legacy to become central to research on human origins. Part of this process has included shedding the methodologies and nomenclatures of narrative approaches to focus on more quantified, scientific descriptions of artifact variability and context. Together with a growing number of chronometric age estimates and environmental information, understanding the West African Stone Age is contributing evolutionary and demographic insights relevant to the entire continent. Undated Acheulean artifacts are abundant across the region, attesting to the presence of archaic Homo. The emerging chronometric record of the Middle Stone Age (MSA) indicates that core and flake technologies have been present in West Africa since at least the Middle Pleistocene (~780–126 thousand years ago or ka) and that they persisted until the Terminal Pleistocene/Holocene boundary (~12ka)—the youngest examples of such technology anywhere in Africa. Although the presence of MSA populations in forests remains an open question, technological differences may correlate with various ecological zones. Later Stone Age (LSA) populations evidence significant technological diversification, including both microlithic and macrolithic traditions. The limited biological evidence also demonstrates that at least some of these populations manifested a unique mixture of modern and archaic morphological features, drawing West Africa into debates about possible admixture events between late-surviving archaic populations and Homo sapiens. As in other regions of Africa, it is possible that population movements throughout the Stone Age were influenced by ecological bridges and barriers. West Africa evidences a number of refugia and ecological bottlenecks that may have played such a role in human prehistory in the region. By the end of the Stone Age, West African groups became increasingly sedentary, engaging in the construction of durable monuments and intensifying wild food exploitation.

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