Increasing Behavioral Flexibility? An Integrative Macro-Scale Approach to Understanding the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa

Abstract

The Middle Stone Age (MSA) of southern Africa represents a period during which anatomically modern humans adopted a series of diverse cultural innovations. Researchers generally attribute these behavioral changes to environmental, neurological, or demographic causes, but none of these alone offers a satisfactory explanation. Even as patterns at site level come into focus, large-scale trends in cultural expansions remain poorly understood. This paper presents different ways to view diachronic datasets from localities in southern Africa and specifically tests hypotheses of environmental and cultural causality. We employ an array of analyses in an attempt to understand large-scale variability observed during the MSA. We evaluated the diversity of stone tool assemblages to model site use, examined transport distances of lithic raw materials to understand patterns of movement, assessed the cultural capacities required to manufacture and use different sets of tools, applied stochastic models to examine the geographic distribution of sites, and reconstructed biome classes and climatic constraints. Our large-scale analysis allowed the research team to integrate different types of information and examine diachronic trends during the MSA. Based on our results, the range of cultural capacity expanded during the MSA. We define cultural capacity as the behavioral potential of a group expressed through the problemsolution distance required to manufacture and use tools. Our dataset also indicates that the actual behavior exhibited by MSA people, their cultural performance as expressed in the archaeological record, is not equivalent to their cultural capacity. Instead we observe that the J Archaeol Method Theory

Lithic technological responses to Late Pleistocene glacial cycling at Pinnacle Point Site 5-6, South Africa

“…When analyses are carried out at the technocomplex scale there is an untested assumption that all the changes in the multiple traits that characterize the technocomplex are coeval and influenced by the same processes. Some recent investigations have found no association between the appearance of new MSA technocomplexes and environment [95, 121–123]. However, those studies did not test for an association between individual lithic assemblage traits and environmental change, and in that way their methodologies differ significantly from ours.…”

“…The decision to choose silcrete over quartzite might not be explained solely by economic factors, which is a perspective in line with a recent study of MSA and LSA silcrete abundance [175], and hypotheses that link raw material selection to aspects of reciprocal exchange and symbolism [52, 53]. The traits not listed in Table 4 are also good candidates for understanding the meaning of continuity in material culture style across space in South Africa and for exploring the ideas that similarities were reinforced by contact and exchange among and between early modern human foragers [51, 92, 172, 176], that short-term temporal changes in technological behavior and differences between sites could reflect local socio-cultural historical trajectories [56, 118, 177], and that a holistic consideration of what drove MSA technological change will include a consideration of non-environmental factors [95, 119, 121, 123]. Further investigations of intra-MIS variability at PP5-6 will also contribute to better understanding the diversity of factors—environmental, economic, functional, and socio-cultural—that operate on finer-scales to influence technological behaviors.…”

“…Analysis can occur at the level of MIS, technocomplex, geological StratAgg, the more specific Sub-aggregate, or smaller, at the level of the plotted artifact within a Stratigraphic Unit. The maximum amount of behavioral information will come from conducting analyses at each of these multiple scales [118, 123, 145]. This first overall analysis of the assemblage examines variation mainly at the largest scale–MIS.…”

“…A lack of correlation between local environmental change and technological change at Blombos Cave and Klipdrift Shelter is used to argue that environment was not a significant driver of innovation, also at the scale of the technocomplex [122]. In their multi-site, macro-scale investigation of MSA variability, Kandel et al [123] argue that the Early MSA, SB, HP, and Late MSA are not associated with any particular environmental condition or conditions, and thus cultural change is not connected to environmental factors.…”

The role of experimental knapping in empirically testing key themes in the evolution of lithic technology: reduction intensity, efficiency and behavioural complexity

“…The statistical tests demonstrated that Levallois technology involved the most rapid rate of phase changes and the highest hierarchical breadth throughout the sequences. This supports those that have emphasised the complexity of Levallois technology as well as the hypothesis that a major component of the Acheulean to Middle Palaeolithic transition was an increase in hierarchical behaviour and cognition (Ambrose 2001;Eren and Lycett 2012;Kandel et al 2016;Moore 2010;Schlanger 1996;Shipton et al 2013b;Wynn and Coolidge 2004;2010b).…”