‘Running ahead of time’ in the development of Palaeolithic industries

Abstract

Palaeolithic people could foresee their technological future no more, or even less, than we are able to. They never said, ‘The Middle Palaeolithic has gone on quite long enough — now we'd better get on with a transition to the Upper.’ So what is one to make of those precocious lithic industries which prefigure key features of later innovations, the industries which ‘run ahead’ of their own time?

Variability in the Middle Stone Age Lithic Sequence, 115,000–60,000 Years Ago at Klasies River, South Africa

“…Blade industries occur in various areas and time periods before the advent of the Upper Palaeolithic (Bar-Yosef & Kuhn, 1999). The simple occurrence of blades at main site or elsewhere cannot be seen as anticipating developments in the Upper Palaeolithic (Vishnyatsky, 1994). The techniques of blade production in the Middle Stone Age are different from those adopted in the Upper Palaeolithic.…”

Symbolic Revolutions and the Australian Archaeological Record

“…Once people begin to store symbolism outside their brains they are modern ... (Wadley 2001, 210). of time' in behavioural capacities (Vishnyatsky 1994). Such objections have caused consternation among the 'long-range' camp:…”

Finding resolution for the Howiesons Poort through the microscope: micro-residue analysis of segments from Sibudu Cave, South Africa

“…One such conundrum exists around the geometric baked tools from the Howiesons Poort (HP) technocomplex of South Africa (see Lombard, 2005a, and references therein). The HP has been described as 'a remarkably precocious lithic entity' (Butzer, 1982), 'transient' (Deacon and Shuurman, 1992), 'unnecessarily burdensome and complex' (Vishnyatsky, 1994), 'most puzzling' (Mitchell, 2002), 'anomalous' (Parkington, 2006), and the dating at the name site as 'an unsolved mystery' (Deacon, 1995). The HP puzzle is mainly centred around the existence of an unusually early blade technology with geometric backed tools, sometimes also described as microlithic.…”