Lyn Wadley

Ages for the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa: implications for human behavior and dispersal.

The expansion of modern human populations in Africa 80,000 to 60,000 years ago and their initial exodus out of Africa have been tentatively linked to two phases of technological and behavioral innovation within the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa—the Still Bay and Howiesons Poort industries—that are associated with early evidence for symbols and personal ornaments. Establishing the correct sequence of events, however, has been hampered by inadequate chronologies. We report ages for nine sites from varied climatic and ecological zones across southern Africa that show that both industries were short-lived (5000 years or less), separated by about 7000 years, and coeval with genetic estimates of population expansion and exit times. Comparison with climatic records shows that these bursts of innovative behavior cannot be explained by environmental factors alone.

Implications for complex cognition from the hafting of tools with compound adhesives in the Middle Stone Age, South Africa

Compound adhesives made from red ochre mixed with plant gum were used in the Middle Stone Age (MSA), South Africa. Replications reported here suggest that early artisans did not merely color their glues red; they deliberately effected physical transformations involving chemical changes from acidic to less acidic pH, dehydration of the adhesive near wood fires, and changes to mechanical workability and electrostatic forces. Some of the steps required for making compound adhesive seem impossible without multitasking and abstract thought. This ability suggests overlap between the cognitive abilities of modern people and people in the MSA. Our multidisciplinary analysis provides a new way to recognize complex cognition in the MSA without necessarily invoking the concept of symbolism.

What is Cultural Modernity? A General View and a South African Perspective from Rose Cottage Cave

Storage of symbolic information outside the human brain is accepted here as the first undisputed evidence for cultural modernity. In the hunter-gatherer context of the Stone Age this storage could include artwork, rapidly changing artefact styles and organized spatial layout of campsites. Modern human behaviour in this context is distinguished by a symbolic use of space and material culture to define social relationships, including significant groupings based on attributes such as kinship, gender, age or skill. Symbolism maintains, negotiates, legitimizes and transmits such relationships. It is argued here that artefacts are not inherently imbued with symbolism and that modern human culture cannot be automatically inferred from inventories of archaeologically recovered material culture. Evidence for the out-of-brain storage of symbolism in southern African sites first appears in the final phase of the Middle Stone Age at about 40,000 years ago.

Middle Stone Age bedding construction and settlement patterns at Sibudu, South Africa

Early humans constructed sleeping mats from local plants, including some with insecticidal properties. The Middle Stone Age (MSA) is associated with early behavioral innovations, expansions of modern humans within and out of Africa, and occasional population bottlenecks. Several innovations in the MSA are seen in an archaeological sequence in the rock shelter Sibudu (South Africa). At ~77,000 years ago, people constructed plant bedding from sedges and other monocotyledons topped with aromatic leaves containing insecticidal and larvicidal chemicals. Beginning at ~73,000 years ago, bedding was burned, presumably for site maintenance. By ~58,000 years ago, bedding construction, burning, and other forms of site use and maintenance intensified, suggesting that settlement strategies changed. Behavioral differences between ~77,000 and 58,000 years ago may coincide with population fluctuations in Africa.

Were snares and traps used in the Middle Stone Age and does it matter? A review and a case study from Sibudu, South Africa

The concept of remote capture involved in the creation and use of snares and traps is one of several indicators that can be used for the recognition of enhanced working memory and complex cognition. It can be argued that this humble technology is a more reliable indicator of complex cognition than encounter hunting, for example with spears. It is difficult to recognize snares and traps archaeologically because they are generally made from materials that do not preserve well. To infer their presence in the past, it is therefore necessary to rely on circumstantial evidence such as mortality profiles, taxonomic diversity and high frequencies of creatures that are susceptible to capture in snares or traps. Clearly there are some problems with using snares to infer complex cognition because people do not necessarily choose meat-getting strategies with the lowest costs. Although snares make economic sense because they reduce search costs, their use by modern hunters is not associated with the type of status accorded to other means of hunting. Social demands, more than economic or environmental ones, may consequently have determined the amount of snaring and trapping that occurred in the past. Because of social attitudes, an absence of snaring need not mean that people were incapable of using this technique. At Sibudu, a South African Middle Stone Age site, snares or other non-selective capture techniques may have been used during the Howiesons Poort and perhaps also the Still Bay Industry. The circumstantial evidence consists of 1. high frequency representations of animals that prefer forested environments, including the tiny blue duiker (adult and juvenile) and the dangerous bushpig, 2. high frequencies of small mammals, 3. high taxonomic diversity and, 4. the presence of small carnivores. Importantly, the Howiesons Poort faunal assemblage is different from that in more recent Middle Stone Age occupations of the site.

Compound‐Adhesive Manufacture as a Behavioral Proxy for Complex Cognition in the Middle Stone Age

Compound adhesives were made in southern Africa at least 70,000 years ago, where they were used to attach similarly shaped stone segments to hafts. Mental rotation, a capacity implying advanced working‐memory capacity, was required to place the segments in various positions to create novel weapons and tools. The compound glues used to fix the segments to shafts are made from disparate ingredients, using an irreversible process. The steps required for compound‐adhesive manufacture demonstrate multitasking and the use of abstraction and recursion. As is the case in recursive language, the artisan needed to hold in mind what was previously done in order to carry out what was still needed. Cognitive fluidity enabled people to do and think several things at the same time, for example, mix glue from disparate ingredients, mentally rotate segments, talk, and maintain fire temperature. Thus, there is a case for attributing advanced mental abilities to people who lived 70,000 years ago in Africa without necessarily invoking symbolic behavior.

The Pleistocene Later Stone Age south of the Limpopo River

The earliest Later Stone Age (LSA) industries from southern Africa are microlithic and unstandardized and include the bipolar technique. The dating of these industries is controversial and the earliest microlithic industry is said to occur at Border Cave at about 39,000 B.P. By 18,000 B.P. a bladelet tradition was established and this was replaced in many parts of southern Africa, at about 12,000 B.P., by a widespread and prolific nonmicrolithic industry, characterized by side-struck flakes. The late Pleistocene environment was colder than present, with particularly harsh conditions during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), between about 20,000 and 18,000 B.P. Populations may have been isolated because archaeological visibility is low during the LGM and decreases further after the LGM. After 13,000 B.P. there is a dramatic increase in sites and this implies that there may have been widespread colonization of territory previously unoccupied for tens of thousands of years. By the end of the late Pleistocene there was a change in hunting patterns, in parts of southern Africa, from an emphasis on the capture of large, gregarious grazers to an emphasis on small, solitary browsers. Social complexity increased during the late Pleistocene, and by 12,000 B.P. it seems possible that Stone Age people were observing some social practices recorded historically among Bushmen (San).

Humans at the end of the Ice Age : the archaeology of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition

Introduction: The World at the End of the Last Ice Age L.G. Straus. The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in Africa and the Near East: L. Straus. At the Transition: The Archaeology of the Pleistocene-Holocene Boundary in Southern Africa P.J. Mitchell, et al. Plus Ca Change: The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in Northeastern Africa A.E. Close. The Impact of Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene Climatic Changes on Humans in Southwestern Asia O. Bar-Yosef. The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in Europe: B.V. Eriksen. The Archaeology of the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in Southwest Europe L.G. Straus. Resource Exploitation, Subsistence Strategies and Adaptiveness in Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene Northwestern Europe B.V. Eriksen. The North European Plain and Eastern Sub-Balticum between 12,000 and 8,000 B.P. R. Schild. The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition on the East European Plain P.M. Dolukhanov. Asia and Australia during the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition: J.M. Erlandson. The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in Greater Australia J. Allen, P. Kershaw. Human Activities and Environmental Changes during the Late Pleistocene to Middle Holocene in Southern Thailand and Southeast Asia S. Pookajorn. The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in Japan and Adjacent Northeast Asia: Climatic and Biotic Change, Broadspectrum Diet, Pottery, and Sedentism C.M. Aikens, T. Akazawa. Siberia in the Late Glacial and Early Postglacial W.R. Powers. Environments and Peoples at the Pleistocene-Holocene Boundary in the Americas D.R. Yesner. Human Adaptation at the Pleistocene-Holocene Boundary (ca. 13,000 to 8,000 B.P.) in Eastern Beringia D.R. Yesner. The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition along the Pacific Coast of North America J.M. Erlandson, M.L. Moss. The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition on the Plains and Rocky Mountains of North America G.C. Frison, R. Bonnichsen. The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in Eastern United States D.F. Morse, et al. The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in Southern South America L.A. Borrero. Conclusion: Surprises, Recurring Themes, and New Questions in the Study of the Late Glacial and Early Postglacial M.A. Jochim. Index.

Recognizing Complex Cognition through Innovative Technology in Stone Age and Palaeolithic Sites

Cognitive complexity is defined here as the capacity for abstract thought, analogical reasoning, cognitive fluidity, innovative thought, complex goal-directed actions, flexibility in problem-solving, multi-tasking, task switching, response inhibition and planning over long distances or time. Some of these attributes are archaeologically recognizable in transformative technologies such as heat treatment of rocks and ochre, and the manufacture of compound adhesives and paints. Advanced executive functions of the brain are also required for remote capture during snaring, which is implied by circumstantial archaeological evidence. Some technologies seem good indicators of complex cognition and the emphasis here is on making the connection, but this does not mean that cognition necessarily drove innovation in the past any more than it does today. The recursive relationships between cognition, social behaviour and technology mean that change cannot be attributed to a single stimulus.

Those marvellous millennia: the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa

Africas Middle Stone Age (MSA) may have lasted almost half a million years, but its earliest expression is not yet well understood. The MSA is best known for innovations that appear in the archaeological record at various times after about 200,000 years ago with the first appearance of Homo sapiens. These novel behaviours embrace hafting technology, the use of compound paints and adhesives, ingenious lithic technology that included pressure flaking and the heat treatment of rock, the engraving of ochre and eggshell with geometric designs, the stringing of shell beads and the production of a wide range of bone implements. Such innovations might have been linked to new types of social behaviour stimulated by demographic pulses and movements within and out of the continent. Population shifts may have occurred repeatedly during the MSA. Southern African sites seem concentrated in the interior of the subcontinent before 130 kya. Thus, the florescence of MSA innovations described here appears to have coincided with the dispersal after 130 kya of populations from the interior to mountainous areas, but, more particularly, to the coastal stretches of the southern and western Cape. Coastal sites are the focus of much of southern Africa’s research into the MSA and some of the continent’s most esteemed sites are coastal ones, particularly those containing iconic Still Bay and Howiesons Poort technocomplexes. By 58 kya occupations tended once more to shift away from the southern coast and back into the interior, or to the eastern seaboard. Some of these later MSA sites have extensive footprints, implying population growth or repeated occupations. Regional and even local variability is characteristic of stone assemblages of the time, while sites seem to have fewer ornaments or decorated items than was formerly the case. The variability in late MSA lithic assemblages is matched by apparent flexibility in the timing of the transfer from the MSA to the Later Stone Age.