Genevieve Dewar

Late-Holocene marine radiocarbon reservoir correction (ΔR) for the west coast of South Africa:

In order to calibrate radiocarbon ages based on samples with a marine carbon component it is important to know the marine carbon reservoir correction or ΔR value. This study measured the ΔR on both known-age pre-bomb marine shells and paired marine and terrestrial samples from two regions on the west coast of South Africa: the southwestern Cape and Namaqualand. Pooling the data by region produces ΔR values that are similar enough to use a west coast weighted mean ΔR of 146 ± 85 14C years to correctly calibrate marine shell or mixed marine and terrestrial 14C ages. There are however temporal differences in ΔR throughout the Holocene, which we compare with proxy data for upwelling and sea surface temperatures.

Opportunistic Subsistence Strategies among Late Holocene Coastal Hunter-Gatherers, Elands Bay, South Africa

ABSTRACT Hunting and gathering was practiced for many hundreds of thousands of years in South Africas Western Cape region, until ceramics and a stock-keeping economy first appeared c. 2,000 years ago, and in the Elands Bay and Lamberts Bay areas 200 years later. Subsistence and settlement patterns in this part of the West Coast of South Africa changed dramatically after this date, but the nature of interactions between indigenous groups engaging with these two types of subsistence practices is still poorly understood. The cultural-contact scenarios so far proposed view this interaction as basically competitive, with forager groups living at the margins of herder society and compelled to change their subsistence and settlement choices by focusing on small food parcels and having to move to less accessible areas. Observations from Borrow Pit Midden and other sites in the study area do not support this scenario. Instead, their records suggest flexible adaptive responses among foragers when at coastal and pericoastal locations. Overall, an opportunistic subsistence strategy was practiced mostly within the immediate surrounding environment of camps with high mobility, characterizing forager settlement. The components of a new cultural-contact model are emerging, but much remains to be done before it is established on a reliable empirical foundation.

Follow the Senqu: Maloti-Drakensberg Paleoenvironments and Implications for Early Human Dispersals into Mountain Systems

The Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains are southern Africa’s highest and give rise to South Africa’s largest river, the Orange-Senqu. At Melikane Rockshelter in highland Lesotho (~1800 m a.s.l.), project AMEMSA (Adaptations to Marginal Environments in the Middle Stone Age) has documented a pulsed human presence since at least MIS 5. Melikane can be interrogated to understand when and why early modern humans chose to increase their altitudinal range. This paper presents the results of a multi-proxy paleoenvironmental analysis of this sequence. Vegetation shifts are registered against a background signal of C3-dominated grasslands, suggesting fluctuations in temperature, humidity and atmospheric CO2 within a generally cool highland environment with high moisture availability. Discussing Melikane in relation to other paleoenvironmental and archeological archives in the region, a model is developed linking highland population flux to prevailing climate. It is proposed that short-lived but acute episodes of rapid onset aridity saw interior groups disperse into the highlands to be nearer to the Orange-Senqu headwaters, perhaps via the river corridor itself.

Paleoenvironments, Sea Levels, and Land Use in Namaqualand, South Africa, During MIS 6-2

In order to expand on the potential range of early human experiences and adaptive strategies, it is first necessary to determine the paleoenvironmental signatures for a given region of study. In this paper we report on proxy terrestrial, marine, and sea level data in order to reconstruct past environments of Namaqualand, South Africa, during MIS 6-2. Although this semiarid southern extension of the Namib Desert is a prime area to investigate early modern human adaptive innovations, environmental and human history of Namaqualand has been largely neglected. We present environmental, chronological, and subsistence data from recent excavations at Spitzkloof Rockshelter A, and review equivalent data from other sites in the Succulent Karoo Biome. The presence of handaxes on the landscape point to a pre-MIS 6 presence in the region, but current evidence suggests that a more dedicated human occupation of the region likely began during MIS 5. Subsequent human dispersals into Namaqualand are recurrent but heavily pulsed and typically linked to humid stadial phases when sea levels were lower. We propose that the westward movement of the coastline potentially increased the carrying capacity of the region by promoting the colonization of grasses onto the coastal plain, attracting larger game. The mechanism driving this change can be attributed to either an increase in inland precipitation as the Benguela-cooled coastline moved west or reduced evapotranspiration due to lowered temperatures. The strongest evidence for this pattern is during MIS 2 when faunal and floral data indicate a cold but humid environment. Faunal species from Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) layers at Spitzkloof A and Apollo 11 include large ungulates such as Equus capensis , a moisture-loving species that disappears toward the end of MIS 2 (~14 ka) when conditions become more xeric.

Ancient human parallel lineages within North America contributed to a coastal expansion

Founder effects in modern populations The genomes of ancient humans can reveal patterns of early human migration (see the Perspective by Achilli et al.). Iceland has a genetically distinct population, despite relatively recent settlement (∼1100 years ago). Ebenesersdóttir et al. examined the genomes of ancient Icelandic people, dating to near the colonization of Iceland, and compared them with modernday Icelandic populations. The ancient DNA revealed that the founders had Gaelic and Norse origins. Genetic drift since the initial settlement has left modern Icelanders with allele frequencies that are distinctive, although still skewed toward those of their Norse founders. Scheib et al. sequenced ancient genomes from the Channel Islands of California, USA, and Ontario, Canada. The ancient Ontario population was similar to other ancient North Americans, as well as to modern Algonquian-speaking Native Americans. In contrast, the California individuals were more like groups that now live in Mexico and South America. It appears that a genetic split and population isolation likely occurred during the Ice Age, but the peoples remixed at a later date. Science, this issue p. 1028, p. 1024; see also p. 964 Two parallel, terminal Pleistocene lineages gave rise to Californian, Central, and South American populations. Little is known regarding the first people to enter the Americas and their genetic legacy. Genomic analysis of the oldest human remains from the Americas showed a direct relationship between a Clovis-related ancestral population and all modern Central and South Americans as well as a deep split separating them from North Americans in Canada. We present 91 ancient human genomes from California and Southwestern Ontario and demonstrate the existence of two distinct ancestries in North America, which possibly split south of the ice sheets. A contribution from both of these ancestral populations is found in all modern Central and South Americans. The proportions of these two ancestries in ancient and modern populations are consistent with a coastal dispersal and multiple admixture events.

Early Maritime Desert Dwellers in Namaqualand, South Africa: A Holocene Perspective on Pleistocene Peopling

ABSTRACT South Africas northern Namaqualand coastal desert is the southern extension of the Namib. Today, this region is semi-desert with patchy subsistence resources and scarce, unpredictable rainfall. Yet this ancient desert landscape possesses residues of human activity stretching back into the Middle Pleistocene, evidenced by heavily weathered surface finds, including handaxes and Victoria West cores. Such old finds in so harsh an environment raise important questions: how do human movements into this area relate to local palaeoenvironmental changes, and how has this relationship changed through time? While no dated Middle Pleistocene sites presently exist to reconstruct the earliest hominin dispersals, several late Pleistocene sites now have chronostratigraphic sequences that can be brought to bear on these questions. This article presents chronological and subsistence-settlement data for one such site, Spitzkloof A Rockshelter in northern Namaqualands rugged Richtersveld. Humans are shown to have visited the site very sporadically between ∼50,000 and 17,000 cal BP. Unlike most of the subcontinent, the most intensive occupations occur during early Marine Isotope Stage 2, when multiple proxies suggest enhanced humidity associated with intensified winter rainfall. We examine these data using the regions better-developed Holocene archaeological record to create predictions about the earliest coastal desert dwellers.

The Comings and Goings of Sheep and Pottery in the Coastal Desert of Namaqualand, South Africa

ABSTRACT This paper evaluates chronological trends in the presence and absence of domestic animal bone (sheep, goat, and cattle) and pottery in Namaqualand, the proposed gateway to the rest of South Africa for early herders or hunter-gatherers with sheep and ceramics. We update date calibrations with local ΔR corrections and mixtures of recent calibration curves and include five previously unpublished dates. We use histograms of calibrated medians, sorted in 100-year bins, to assess sustained regional patterns with dates associated with domestic animal bone and pottery (n = 73). While too small to be useful as a population proxy, the current set of dates does reveal three pulses of occupation separated by two clear gaps, which we evaluate with a Bayesian model of three sequential phases. The models boundaries are used as estimates of the dates of Early (AD 80–210), Middle (AD 490–790), and Late (AD 1180–1690) occupational phases separated by two substantial lapses of 280 and 380 years, respectively. The alternating phases of presence and absence are suggestively correlated with climate shifts, leading to a discussion of the idea that effective moisture was a crucial factor in choosing whether to occupy Namaqualand. The set of archaeological dates has greater temporal and spatial resolution than many regional climate data, so we suggest that these trends may more accurately reflect the variable conditions specific to Namaqualand, at least until they are refined by future climate research.

Linguistic Clues to Iroquoian Prehistory

This paper employs a quantitative analysis of lexical data to generate a tree describing the historical relationships among Iroquoian languages. An alternative to glottochronology is used to estimate the timing of branching events within the tree. We estimate the homeland of the language family using lexical and geographic distance measures and then compare this estimate with homeland determinations in the literature. Our results suggest that Proto-Iroquoian dates to around 2624 bc, and that the Finger Lakes region of west-central New York is the most likely homeland. The results also revealed a strong relationship between linguistic dissimilarity and geographic distance, likely reflecting the isolating effects of spatial separation on the magnitude of linguistic exchange. The timing of language divergences seems to coincide with important events observable in the archaeological record, including the first evidence for the use of corn in New York and Ontario. The development of important Iroquoian cultural attributes such as the longhouse, matrilocal residence, and the intensification of agriculture all coincide with a period which saw most of the internal language divergences.

Excavations at Kasteelberg, and the origins of the Khoekhoen in the Western Cape, South Africa

authors contributing pieces that expand the theoretical issues that are relevant to archaeologists everywhere, not only those working in the African Diaspora. Although I have not addressed it in the place in which it occurs in the volume, the introductory chapter (‘Pathways to the archaeology of transatlantic Africa’), by the editors, is one of the most valuable pieces of the book as it provides a really comprehensive discussion of the challenges and goals of archaeology of the African Diaspora period, in both African and New World settings. In contrast to the introductory chapters in many edited volumes, that tend to merely provide a few organising comments for the papers that follow, this hefty (nearly 50 page) chapter provides a real orientation to the serious questions that underlie archaeological approaches to the diverse transformations that occurred during the period of the African Diaspora, in Africa as well as the Americas. As is the case with all edited works, the contributions vary in the degree to which they meet the goals for the volume, however, taken as a group, this book is remarkably successful. It is equally useful for specialists in later African archaeology and for archaeologists of the African Diaspora. Furthermore, Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora provides an excellent introduction to the state of research on the subject, and is appropriate for anyone wishing to develop an understanding of the big issues in the archaeology of the African Diaspora.