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

Making Points: The Middle Stone Age lithic industry of the Makgadikgadi Basin, Botswana

“…The excavated sites contain a previously undocumented MSA industry characterized by a limited toolkit (also see Coulson et al, 2022;Staurset et al, 2022;Thomas et al, 2022). This includes the use of Levallois, discoidal and Kombewa approaches to the production of blanks, which are subsequently shaped by invasive retouch on one or both faces into symmetrical points.…”

“…These were often located directly on top of silcrete/ calcrete occurences. Sites with diagnostic artefacts from the ESA, LSA and Iron Age were also present and are discussed in Coulson et al (2022), and associated chronologies presented in Burrough et al (2022) and Thomas et al, (2022). None of the surveyed sites had preserved faunal remains but given the presence of fossilized bone on the pan floor there is potential for the discovery of such sites.…”

“…We also prioritized sites where several stages of lithic production were evidently present. To address goal 5, we factored in sites associated with dune edges, hardened clay areas and silcrete outcrops, and, for goal 6, those with higher potential for dating (see Burrough et al, 2022;Nash et al, 2022;Thomas et al, 2022). OSL dating at MAK14K, MAK14O, MAK15 and MAK33 (reported in detail by Burrough et al, 2022), revealed that the lithic industry at these sites was deposited during dry periods following palaeolake high stands dating to c.128e81 ka and c. 72e57 ka.…”

“…Given the fracture patterns of these raw materials, prehistoric knappers would likely attain different results using these compared to Kalahari silcrete, lithic tradition notwithstanding. The shared typological and technological affinities with MSA sites towards the north and east (and the lack of such to the south) provide an interesting background for further investigations of regional migrations between contrasting environmental regions (see also Thomas et al, 2022).…”

“…Further, the Makgadikgadi Basin is a likely route for early migrations across the Kalahari, potentially bridging lithic traditions at the Tsodilo Hills (Coulson et al, 2011;Robbins et al, 2000a;Robbins et al, 2000b;Staurset and Coulson, 2014), in Zimbabwe (e.g., Larsson, 1996;Larsson, 2007), and Zambia (e.g., Barham, 2000;Burrough et al, 2019;Duller et al, 2015), with the more thoroughly documented MSA chronology of South Africa (e.g., Lombard, 2012;Wadley, 2015). Despite the lack of larger archaeological investigations, or even a regional dated chronology for the Stone Age, the Makgadikgadi-Okavango area was recently (Chan et al, 2019) suggested to be the homeland for the founder population of anatomically modern humans, based on modelling of mitochondrial DNA in current human populations (for contrary views see Ackermann et al, 2019;Schlebusch et al, 2019;Thomas et al, 2022).…”