Still Bay Point-Production Strategies at Hollow Rock Shelter and Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter and Knowledge-Transfer Systems in Southern Africa at about 80-70 Thousand Years Ago

Högberg, Anders; Lombard, Marlize

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0168012

Cited by 28 publications

(33 citation statements)

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“…These pieces were worked with the proper technical approach to point making; i.e., on‐edge knapping with the aim to remove thin surface‐covering flakes extending over more than half of the face of a piece. However, a proper point production strategy as recently documented for Still Bay points was not applied . Thus, the copied knapping could never result in formal Still Bay points.…”

Section: Recognizing Play Objects and Object Play In The Archeologicamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Högberg and Lombard's study of knowledge‐transfer systems during the Still Bay (80,000‐70,000 BP) in South Africa demonstrates some interregional conventions, but also intraregional variability in the production of Still Bay points. These localized strategies probably reflect flexibility in the organization of knowledge‐transfer systems at work during the later stages of the Middle Stone Age in South Africa between about 80,000 and 70,000 BP, indicating that what children may have learned through play‐copying varied from group to group.…”

Section: Recognizing Play Objects and Object Play In The Archeologicamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, a proper point production strategy as recently documented for Still Bay points was not applied. 101 Thus, the copied knapping could never result in formal Still Bay points.…”

Section: Re Cog Ni Zi N G P L Ay Obj E Cts a N D Obj Ec T P L Ay I mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The role of play objects and object play in human cognitive evolution and innovation

Riede

Johannsen

Högberg

et al. 2018

Evolutionary Anthropology

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In this contribution, we address a major puzzle in the evolution of human material culture: If maturing individuals just learn their parental generation's material culture, then what is the origin of key innovations as documented in the archeological record? We approach this question by coupling a life‐history model of the costs and benefits of experimentation with a niche‐construction perspective. Niche‐construction theory suggests that the behavior of organisms and their modification of the world around them have important evolutionary ramifications by altering developmental settings and selection pressures. Part of Homo sapiens' niche is the active provisioning of children with play objects — sometimes functional miniatures of adult tools — and the encouragement of object play, such as playful knapping with stones. Our model suggests that salient material culture innovation may occur or be primed in a late childhood or adolescence sweet spot when cognitive and physical abilities are sufficiently mature but before the full onset of the concerns and costs associated with reproduction. We evaluate the model against a series of archeological cases and make suggestions for future research.

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Section: Recognizing Play Objects and Object Play In The Archeologicamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Recognizing Play Objects and Object Play In The Archeologicamentioning

confidence: 99%

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The role of play objects and object play in human cognitive evolution and innovation

Riede

Johannsen

Högberg

et al. 2018

Evolutionary Anthropology

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“…The points often appear in assemblages together with flakes and cores, but with few other formal tools (Evans 1994). Perhaps of note here is the fact that all Still Bay assemblages contain some unifacial points as part of their composition, yet these are seldom discussed as part of recent 'Still Bay' lithic research (though see Högberg and Lombard 2016b;Lombard and Högberg 2018). We suggest that this omission hampers detailed understanding of techno-behaviours associated with point production during this technocomplex and consequently we include both bifacial and unifacial points in our analysis.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal perspectives on Still Bay point production at Sibudu Cave, KwaZulu-Natal, in the context of southern Africa

Lombard

Högberg

Wadley

2019

Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa

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Based on optically stimulated luminescence age estimates it has been argued that the Still Bay represents a sudden, short-lived technological innovation dating to about 72-71 kya. Yet, few sites have the stratigraphic integrity and Still Bay point assemblage size to test this assumption. The Wadley deep sounding of Sibudu Cave provides such an opportunity. Here we use fine-grained analyses consisting of technological attributes and morphometric data to explore the retouched point assemblages of Sibudu over a period of more than ten thousand years spanning the Still Bay. Although we found subtle changes through time, we found no evidence of a technological break in retouched point-production strategies since the Wadley early pre-Still Bay at more than 77 kya through to the final Still Bay/early Howiesons Poort dating to 64.7 ± 2.3 kya. We did, however, uncover a potential point-production hiatus at the site and we present testable hypotheses for this phenomenon. We further contextualise the Sibudu assemblages within southern Africa by directly comparing them with those of Hollow Rock Shelter, Umhlatuzana and Apollo 11. Although our results demonstrate both variation and similarities between the different Still Bay assemblages, we could not replicate a previous suggestion regarding technical disconnection between a northeast/south-west axis on the greater landscape. RÉSUMÉ

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“…Middle Stone Age sites in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, e.g., Sibudu Cave 13 , Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter 19 and Border Cave 20 , demonstrate human occupation since >100 kya. Here we report the sequencing and analyses of the genomes of seven ancient individuals from KwaZulu-Natal (Table 1, Figure 1), directly dated to the last 2 kya.…”

Section: Main Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ancient genomes from southern Africa pushes modern human divergence beyond 260,000 years ago

Schlebusch

Malmström

Günther

et al. 2017

Preprint

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30Southern Africa is consistently placed as one of the potential regions for the evolution of Homo sapiens. 31To examine the region's human prehistory prior to the arrival of migrants from East and West Africa or 32 Eurasia in the last 1,700 years, we generated and analyzed genome sequence data from seven ancient 33 individuals from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Three Stone Age hunter-gatherers date to ~2,000 years 34 ago, and we show that they were related to current-day southern San groups such as the Karretjie People. 35Four Iron Age farmers (300-500 years old) have genetic signatures similar to present day speakers. The genome sequence (13x coverage) of a juvenile boy from Ballito Bay, who lived ~2,000 37 years ago, demonstrates that southern African Stone Age hunter-gatherers were not impacted by recent 38 admixture; however, we estimate that all modern-day Khoekhoe and San groups have been influenced 39 by 9-22% genetic admixture from East African/Eurasian pastoralist groups arriving >1,000 years ago, 40 including the Ju|'hoansi San, previously thought to have very low levels of admixture. Using traditional 41 and new approaches, we estimate the population divergence time between the Ballito Bay boy and other 42 groups to beyond 260,000 years ago. These estimates dramatically increases the deepest divergence 43 amongst modern humans, coincide with the onset of the Middle Stone Age in sub-Saharan Africa, and 44 coincide with anatomical developments of archaic humans into modern humans as represented in the 45 local fossil record. Cumulatively, cross-disciplinary records increasingly point to southern Africa as a 46 potential (not necessarily exclusive) 'hot spot' for the evolution of our species. 47. CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.The copyright holder for this preprint (which . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/145409 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online Jun. 5, 2017; African indigenous groups, and push the emergence of modern humans back to >260 kya. 75We sequenced the genomes of three Stone Age hunter-gatherers and four Iron Age farmers, directly 76 radiocarbon dated to ~2 kya and 0.5-0.3 kya respectively, to between 0.01x and 13.2x genome coverage 77( Figure 1, Table 1, SI 1 for archaeological contexts, and SI 2-3 for sampling and laboratory procedures). 78The DNA-sequence data display all features characteristic of ancient DNA (e.g. 21 , short DNA fragments was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.The copyright holder for this preprint (which . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/145409 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online Jun. 5, 2017; 4 haplotype (SI Section 5.1), common among modern-day Khoe-San 17 . 90To assess population affinities among the ancient individuals and their relations to modern-day groups, 91we merged the ancient southern African genome data wit...

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Still Bay Point-Production Strategies at Hollow Rock Shelter and Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter and Knowledge-Transfer Systems in Southern Africa at about 80-70 Thousand Years Ago

Cited by 28 publications

References 50 publications

The role of play objects and object play in human cognitive evolution and innovation

The role of play objects and object play in human cognitive evolution and innovation

Temporal perspectives on Still Bay point production at Sibudu Cave, KwaZulu-Natal, in the context of southern Africa

Ancient genomes from southern Africa pushes modern human divergence beyond 260,000 years ago

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