Investigating lithic scatters in arid environments: The Early and Middle Stone Age in Namibia

Lacustrine geoarchaeology in the central Kalahari: Implications for Middle Stone Age behaviour and adaptation in dryland conditions

“…There is also a sense that the benefits of excavating open-air surface archaeology sites has been generally undervalued in southern African research (Forssman and Pargeter, 2014). Several reasons may underpin this: the assumed risks of post-occupation disturbance and weathering (Oestmo et al, 2014); potential difficulties in establishing chronologies for open sites (Knight and Stratford, 2020); and the assumption that rock shelter and cave sites provide rich, reliable, records often spanning wide temporal ranges, allowing technological shifts to be analysed (Marean, 2016;Roberts et al, 2016;Reynard and Henshilwood, 2019). Butzer (1984) noted that without recourse to open sites and through over-reliance on the records from caves and rock shelters, incomplete or biased interpretations of early human behaviour in southern Africa could result.…”