Karen L. van Niekerk

A 100,000-year-old ochre-processing workshop at Blombos Cave, South Africa.

Early humans mixed and stored ochre pigments in shells 100,000 years ago, an indication of the emergence of higher planning. The conceptual ability to source, combine, and store substances that enhance technology or social practices represents a benchmark in the evolution of complex human cognition. Excavations in 2008 at Blombos Cave, South Africa, revealed a processing workshop where a liquefied ochre-rich mixture was produced and stored in two Haliotis midae (abalone) shells 100,000 years ago. Ochre, bone, charcoal, grindstones, and hammerstones form a composite part of this production toolkit. The application of the mixture is unknown, but possibilities include decoration and skin protection.

Climate, Environment and Early Human Innovation: Stable Isotope and Faunal Proxy Evidence from Archaeological Sites (98-59ka) in the Southern Cape, South Africa

The Middle Stone Age (MSA) of southern Africa, and in particular its Still Bay and Howiesons Poort lithic traditions, represents a period of dramatic subsistence, cultural, and technological innovation by our species, Homo sapiens. Climate change has frequently been postulated as a primary driver of the appearance of these innovative behaviours, with researchers invoking either climate instability as a reason for the development of buffering mechanisms, or environmentally stable refugia as providing a stable setting for experimentation. Testing these alternative models has proved intractable, however, as existing regional palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental records remain spatially, stratigraphically, and chronologically disconnected from the archaeological record. Here we report high-resolution records of environmental shifts based on stable carbon and oxygen isotopes in ostrich eggshell (OES) fragments, faunal remains, and shellfish assemblages excavated from two key MSA archaeological sequences, Blombos Cave and Klipdrift Shelter. We compare these records with archaeological material remains in the same strata. The results from both sites, spanning the periods 98–73 ka and 72–59 ka, respectively, show significant changes in vegetation, aridity, rainfall seasonality, and sea temperature in the vicinity of the sites during periods of human occupation. While these changes clearly influenced human subsistence strategies, we find that the remarkable cultural and technological innovations seen in the sites cannot be linked directly to climate shifts. Our results demonstrate the need for scale-appropriate, on-site testing of behavioural-environmental links, rather than broader, regional comparisons.

Diachronic change within the Still Bay at Blombos Cave, South Africa

Characteristically shaped bifacial points are stone artefacts with which the Middle Stone Age Still Bay techno-complex in Southern Africa is identified. Traditional approaches such as chaîne opératoire and two-dimensional metrics in combination with attribute analyses have been used to analyse variability within Still Bay point assemblages. Here we develop a protocol to extract and analyse high resolution 3-dimensional geometric morphometric information about Still Bay point morphology. We also investigate ways in which the independent variables of time, raw-material and tool size may be driving patterns of shape variation in the Blombos Cave point assemblage. We demonstrate that at a single, stratified Still Bay site points undergo significant modal changes in tool morphology and standardization. Our results caution against (1) treatment of the Still Bay as a static technological entity and (2) drawing demographic inferences stemming from grouping Still Bay point collections within the same cultural label.

Early Evidence for the Extensive Heat Treatment of Silcrete in the Howiesons Poort at Klipdrift Shelter (Layer PBD, 65 ka), South Africa

Heating stone to enhance its flaking qualities is among the multiple innovative adaptations introduced by early modern human groups in southern Africa, in particular during the Middle Stone Age Still Bay and Howiesons Poort traditions. Comparatively little is known about the role and impact of this technology on early modern human behaviors and cultural expressions, due, in part, to the lack of comprehensive studies of archaeological assemblages documenting the heat treatment of stone. We address this issue through an analysis of the procedure used for heating and a technological analysis of a lithic assemblage recovered from one Howiesons Poort assemblage at Klipdrift Shelter (southern Cape, South Africa). The resulting data show extensive silcrete heat treatment, which adds a new dimension to our understanding of fire-related behaviors during the Howiesons Poort, highlighting the important role played by a heat treatment stage in the production of silcrete blades. These results are made possible by our new analytical procedure that relies on the analysis of all silcrete artifacts. It provides direct evidence of a controlled use of fire which took place during an early stage of core exploitation, thereby impacting on all subsequent stages of the lithic chaîne opératoire, which, to date, has no known equivalent in the Middle Stone Age or Middle Paleolithic record outside of southern Africa.

Marine fish exploitation during the Middle and Later Stone Age of South Africa

Marine fish remains are not common in Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites in Africa. There are currently only two known MSA sites with good organic preservation in South Africa that contain marine fish remains in relatively high numbers: Blombos Cave (BBC) and Klasies River main site (KR). Marine fish exploitation is considered by some researchers as a marker of modern human behaviour, requiring cognitive and technological capacities thought to have appeared only after 50 000 years ago, during the Later Stone Age (LSA). There is mounting artefactual evidence pointing towards an earlier date for modern human behaviour than previously thought, and most of the evidence currently comes from MSA assemblages in southern Africa. Both KR and BBC contain artefactual evidence for behavioural modernity during the MSA, at least as far back as 70 thousand years ago at BBC. The fish from these two sites, along with four LSA fish assemblages (Blombos Cave LSA, Hoffman’s/ Robberg Cave and Blombosfontein 1 and 6), were examined using a more systematic and comprehensive approach than has previously been applied to South African marine fish assemblages, allowing a level of comparison between assemblages not previously possible. This has indicated that there is a large deficit of fish elements in the MSA relative to the LSA, and that age-related taphonomic processes have diminished the numbers of fish originally deposited. These analyses have revealed that people living at BBC and KR during the MSA could catch fish, and did so periodically, which is contrary to the model arguing for a late manifestation behavioural modernity.

Identifying early modern human ecological niche expansions and associated cultural dynamics in the South African Middle Stone Age

The archaeological record shows that typically human cultural traits emerged at different times, in different parts of the world, and among different hominin taxa. This pattern suggests that their emergence is the outcome of complex and nonlinear evolutionary trajectories, influenced by environmental, demographic, and social factors, that need to be understood and traced at regional scales. The application of predictive algorithms using archaeological and paleoenvironmental data allows one to estimate the ecological niches occupied by past human populations and identify niche changes through time, thus providing the possibility of investigating relationships between cultural innovations and possible niche shifts. By using such methods to examine two key southern Africa archaeological cultures, the Still Bay [76–71 thousand years before present (ka)] and the Howiesons Poort (HP; 66–59 ka), we identify a niche shift characterized by a significant expansion in the breadth of the HP ecological niche. This expansion is coincident with aridification occurring across Marine Isotope Stage 4 (ca. 72–60 ka) and especially pronounced at 60 ka. We argue that this niche shift was made possible by the development of a flexible technological system, reliant on composite tools and cultural transmission strategies based more on “product copying” rather than “process copying.” These results counter the one niche/one human taxon equation. They indicate that what makes our cultures, and probably the cultures of other members of our lineage, unique is their flexibility and ability to produce innovations that allow a population to shift its ecological niche.

A human deciduous molar from the Middle Stone Age (Howiesons Poort) of Klipdrift Shelter, South Africa

a Paleoanthropology, Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment, Eberhard Karls Universit€ at Tubingen, Rumelinstrasse 23, Tubingen 72070, Germany b Department of Anthropology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, 11794-4364 New York, USA c Department of Anatomical Sciences, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, 11794-4364 New York, USA d Department of Cultural Heritage, University of Bologna, Via degli Ariani 1, 48121 Ravenna, Italy e Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany f Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa g Institute for Archaeology, History, Culture and Religious Studies, University of Bergen, Oysteinsgate 3, N-5007 Bergen, Norway h Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, 1 Jan Smuts Avenue, Braamfontein 2000, Johannesburg, South Africa