Ralf Vogelsang

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.

New Excavations of Middle Stone Age Deposits at Apollo 11 Rockshelter, Namibia: Stratigraphy, Archaeology, Chronology and Past Environments

This paper presents new information obtained from a recent excavation and reassessment of the stratigraphy, chronology, archaeological assemblages and environmental context of the Apollo 11 rockshelter, which contains the longest late Pleistocene and Holocene archaeological sequence in Namibia. The Middle Stone Age (MSA) industries represented at the site include an early MSA, Still Bay, Howieson’s Poort and late MSA. Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of individual quartz grains yielded numerical ages for the Still Bay and Howieson’s Poort, and indicated the presence of a post-Howieson’s Poort phase. OSL dating also verified conventional and accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon ages for a further two later MSA phases. The timing of the transition from the MSA to the early Later Stone Age was also investigated. Improved resolution of the excavation and a more detailed stratigraphy revealed the presence of near-sterile cultural layers, which in some cases assisted in subdividing the MSA cultural phases. Such information, in combination with the new radiocarbon and OSL chronologies, helps address questions about the duration and continuity of MSA occupation at the site. Analyses of the faunal and archaeobotanical remains show some differences between the occupation phases at the site that may be associated with changing environmental conditions.

New Approaches to the Study of Surface Palaeolithic Artefacts: A pilot project at Zebra River, Western Namibia

Open-air surface scatters of stone artefacts are the most common category of Palaeolithic sites in arid regions. Nevertheless, they are not the sites most favoured by archaeologists. They are regarded as not in situ, there is no preservation of faunal or botanical remains, and they are not datable. For these reasons, their informative value is generally considered to be rather poor. The focus of the book at hand is explicitly on Palaeolithic surface artefacts. On the basis of his fieldwork in the Zebra River area in western Namibia, Hardaker wants to demonstrate that surface sites can indeed contribute to our understanding of the past. The book starts with three introductory sections, describing the landscape of the research area, the archaeological context and the analytical methods. This introduction is followed by site-by-site descriptions of the more than 70 archaeological occurrences recorded during six field seasons between 2005 and 2010. This is a purely descriptive catalogue of each site’s location, the fieldwork that was conducted and the artefacts recorded. The data are analysed again on a site-by-site basis in chapter 5, which also discusses both specific and more general topics that relate to more than one site. Conclusions are drawn in chapter 6, which is, however, more of a short summary. The book ends with six appendices, including a complete list of all recorded artefacts. Terry Hardaker is not a professional archaeologist, but an enthusiastic amateur in the best sense of the word and it would be desirable if all professionals would describe their methods in such detail. The same accuracy is unfortunately missing from the book’s editing. Cited publications are missing from the list of references and page numbers of cross-references are in many cases incorrect. The latter is Reference