Nelson Bay Cave: A palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the last 22 ka using stable carbon and oxygen isotopes from bovid tooth enamel

Naidoo, Navashni; Sealy, Judith; Brunton, S.

doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2015.08.117

Cited by 1 publication

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“…Current research is focused on developing higher-resolution and robust paleoenvironmental and paleoscape models for the region around PP5-6 [40] and when this is complete, we will be able to more precisely compare these records to changes in lithic technology at PP5-6 using the high-resolution database developed by the analyses presented here. To assess the extent to which our observations apply to glacial conditions more broadly could be achieved by integrating sequences that cover other glacial periods such as MIS 6 at Pinnacle Point 13B [77, 179], and MIS 2 at Boomplaas [180, 181] and Nelson Bay Cave [79, 182]. …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2017

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There are multiple hypotheses for human responses to glacial cycling in the Late Pleistocene, including changes in population size, interconnectedness, and mobility. Lithic technological analysis informs us of human responses to environmental change because lithic assemblage characteristics are a reflection of raw material transport, reduction, and discard behaviors that depend on hunter-gatherer social and economic decisions. Pinnacle Point Site 5–6 (PP5-6), Western Cape, South Africa is an ideal locality for examining the influence of glacial cycling on early modern human behaviors because it preserves a long sequence spanning marine isotope stages (MIS) 5, 4, and 3 and is associated with robust records of paleoenvironmental change. The analysis presented here addresses the question, what, if any, lithic assemblage traits at PP5-6 represent changing behavioral responses to the MIS 5-4-3 interglacial-glacial cycle? It statistically evaluates changes in 93 traits with no a priori assumptions about which traits may significantly associate with MIS. In contrast to other studies that claim that there is little relationship between broad-scale patterns of climate change and lithic technology, we identified the following characteristics that are associated with MIS 4: increased use of quartz, increased evidence for outcrop sources of quartzite and silcrete, increased evidence for earlier stages of reduction in silcrete, evidence for increased flaking efficiency in all raw material types, and changes in tool types and function for silcrete. Based on these results, we suggest that foragers responded to MIS 4 glacial environmental conditions at PP5-6 with increased population or group sizes, ‘place provisioning’, longer and/or more intense site occupations, and decreased residential mobility. Several other traits, including silcrete frequency, do not exhibit an association with MIS. Backed pieces, once they appear in the PP5-6 record during MIS 4, persist through MIS 3. Changing paleoenvironments explain some, but not all temporal technological variability at PP5-6.

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