Julio Mercader

Mozambican Grass Seed Consumption During the Middle Stone Age

Seed for Food The seeds of grain-producing plants are more difficult to harvest than nuts or fruits as food. It has been unclear when early humans began to rely extensively on grains, but Mercader (p. 1680) has discovered films of starch residues on stone tools at a cave site in Mozambique dating to about 100,000 years ago. The residues are consistent with starch grains from wild sorghum and indicate that early humans relied on cereals much earlier than previously thought. The Mozambican example of sorghum exploitation thus represents the longest known tradition of cereal use in the world. Residues on stone tools imply that early humans were processing grass seeds by 100,000 years ago. The role of starchy plants in early hominin diets and when the culinary processing of starches began have been difficult to track archaeologically. Seed collecting is conventionally perceived to have been an irrelevant activity among the Pleistocene foragers of southern Africa, on the grounds of both technological difficulty in the processing of grains and the belief that roots, fruits, and nuts, not cereals, were the basis for subsistence for the past 100,000 years and further back in time. A large assemblage of starch granules has been retrieved from the surfaces of Middle Stone Age stone tools from Mozambique, showing that early Homo sapiens relied on grass seeds starting at least 105,000 years ago, including those of sorghum grasses.

Across Forests and Savannas: Later Stone Age Assemblages from Ituri and Semliki, Democratic Republic of Congo

This article characterizes Later Stone Age quartz industries from several sites in the rainforests and woodland-savanna mosaics of the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, with an emphasis on various reduction strategies that include simple debitage, bipolar percussion, discoidal centripetal percussion, Modes 4 and 5, pebble tools, flaw propagation, and formal tools. Comparisons between forest and woodland-savanna sites establish strong similarities among them over time, determine deliberate cultural choices as to raw material selection and overall reduction strategies, provide further evidence for an early inception of the Later Stone Age across tropical Africa, and show that ecologically distinct or highly specialized extractive technologies were not required to settle rainforests.

The nature of 'stone-lines' in the African Quaternary record: archaeological resolution at the rainforest site of Mosumu, Equatorial Guinea

Abstract ‘Stone-lines’ are widespread Quaternary features that appear in tropical and subtropical regions. They have a diverse nature and genesis, and are frequently associated with archaeological assemblages. However, archaeological deposition and ‘stone-line’ configuration may be unrelated geological events separated by thousands of years. The energetics involved in ‘stone-line’ formation, coarse and fine material translocation across space and in depth, and overall assemblage integrity vary from one site to another. This paper presents quantitative and spatial geoarchaeological data from the site of Mosumu, in the tropical rain forest of continental Equatorial Guinea. Mosumu yielded Middle and Later Stone Age assemblages dated to at least the last 30,000 years in a ‘stone-line’ context. Special attention to the study of vertical and horizontal variations of artifacts, sedimentary features, and taphonomic indicators allows analysis of the nature, meaning, and archeological resolution at this site. The results are placed in the wider debate over the meaning of ‘stone-lines’ in the African Quaternary record.

Phytoliths from Middle Stone Age habitats in the Mozambican Rift (105–29 ka)

The detection of areas suitable for hominins during late Pleistocene drought intervals is currently a priority for Middle Stone Age research. Predicting the location of populations and dispersal pathways through the East African Rift System during the last glacial phase is a challenging task due to scarce direct archaeo-vegetation data. We present a Mozambican phytolith record spanning 105-29 ka and argue for the necessity and utility of using local plant microbotanical data from archaeological sites to understand the past environments in which early modern humans lived. We assess biome structure, spatial variability, and compare phytolith-based to lacustrine environmental reconstructions to conclude that dense wooded landscapes dominated the area over much of the last glacial phase. Archaeological and botanical data suggest the hypothesis of a palaeodispersal along a montane woodland archipelago that could have attracted hominin settlement and facilitated dispersals through an inland bridge that connected southern, central and East Africa, and the two branches of the East African Rift System.

The Eastern Periphery of the Yoruba Cultural Sphere: Ceramics from the Lowland Rain Forests of Southwestern Cameroon

Numerous societies throughout subSaharan Africa supported strong political systems prior to European colonization. Seldom, however, are the boundaries of large, dominant polities sharply delineated, making it difficult to identify the extent of their influence on neighbouring, peripheral communities. In this report, we present ceramic evidence from the lowland rain forest of southwest Cameroon suggesting macroregional interactions that, during the last millennium, connected later Iron Age polities of Central Africa with Nigeria and Burkina Faso, West Africa. We propose that these rainforest communities were engaging in longdistance regional interaction networks with societies much farther west than previously expected and thus formed the eastern periphery of the Yoruba culture sphere.Numerous societies throughout subSaharan Africa supported strong political systems prior to European colonization. Seldom, however, are the boundaries of large, dominant polities sharply delineated, making it difficult to identify the extent of their influence on neighbouring, peripheral communities. In this report, we present ceramic evidence from the lowland rain forest of southwest Cameroon suggesting macroregional interactions that, during the last millennium, connected later Iron Age polities of Central Africa with Nigeria and Burkina Faso, West Africa. We propose that these rainforest communities were engaging in longdistance regional interaction networks with societies much farther west than previously expected and thus formed the eastern periphery of the Yoruba culture sphere.

78,000-year-old record of Middle and Later stone age innovation in an East African tropical forest

The Middle to Later Stone Age transition in Africa has been debated as a significant shift in human technological, cultural, and cognitive evolution. However, the majority of research on this transition is currently focused on southern Africa due to a lack of long-term, stratified sites across much of the African continent. Here, we report a 78,000-year-long archeological record from Panga ya Saidi, a cave in the humid coastal forest of Kenya. Following a shift in toolkits ~67,000 years ago, novel symbolic and technological behaviors assemble in a non-unilinear manner. Against a backdrop of a persistent tropical forest-grassland ecotone, localized innovations better characterize the Late Pleistocene of this part of East Africa than alternative emphases on dramatic revolutions or migrations.Most of the archaeological record of the Middle to Later Stone Age transition comes from southern Africa. Here, Shipton et al. describe the new site Panga ya Saidi on the coast of Kenya that covers the last 78,000 years and shows gradual cultural and technological change in the Late Pleistocene.

Publisher Correction: 78,000-year-old record of Middle and Later Stone Age innovation in an East African tropical forest

The originally published version of this Article contained an error in Fig. 3, whereby an additional unrelated graph was overlaid on top of the magnetic susceptibility plot. Furthermore, the Article title contained an error in the capitalisation of ‘Stone Age’. Both of these errors have now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article.