Landscape variability in tool-use and edge damage formation in South African Middle Stone Age lithic assemblages

Abstract

This study explores how early modern humans used stone tool technology to adapt to changing climates and coastlines in the Middle Stone Age of South Africa. The MSA is associated with the earliest fossil evidence for modern humans and complex cultural behaviors during a time period of dramatic climate change. Human culture allows for the creation, use, and transmission of technological knowledge that can evolve with changing environmental conditions. Understanding the interactions between technology and the environment is essential to illuminating the role of culture during the origin of our species. This study is focused on understanding ancient tool use from the study of lithic edge damage patterns at archaeological assemblages in southern Africa by using image-based quantitative methods for analyzing stone tools. An extensive experimental program using replicated stone tools provides the comparative linkages between the archaeological artifacts and the tasks for which they were used. MSA foragers structured their tool use and discard behaviors on the landscape in several ways -by using and discarding hunting tools more frequently in the field rather than in caves/rockshelters, but similarly in coastal and interior contexts. This study provides evidence that during a significant microlithic technological shift seen in southern Africa at ~75,000 years ago, new technologies were developed alongside rather than replacing existing technologies. These results are compared with aspects of the European archaeological record at this time to identify features of early human technological behavior that may be unique to the evolutionary history of our species.ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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

“…The protective nature and large space afforded by the rockshelter geologic structure would make the site an attractive locus of re-occupation. The high density of artifacts particularly compared to nearby open-air localities at Vleesbaai [128], low frequency of impact fractures [129], and range of tool edge damage patterning that represents a range of processing activities [130] suggest that PP5-6 served primarily as a residential site [124, 131] through much, but not necessarily all, of its occupation record. For that reason, duration of occupation at PP5-6 primarily informs us about degree of residential mobility.…”