Klipdrift Shelter, southern Cape, South Africa: preliminary report on the Howiesons Poort layers

Henshilwood, Christopher S.; Niekerk, Karen L. van; Wurz, Sarah; Delagnes, Anne; Armitage, Simon; Rifkin, Riaan F.; Douze, Katja; Keene, Petro; Haaland, Magnus; Reynard, Jerome P.; Discamps, Emmanuel; Mienies, Samantha

doi:10.1016/j.jas.2014.01.033

Cited by 148 publications

(129 citation statements)

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“…However, the time before the SB and after the HP is more difficult to analyze precisely because it is less well defined in terms of typology, technology, and chronology. Although recent research is aimed at better understanding these questions (e.g., Conard et al 2012;Porraz et al 2013;Henshilwood et al 2014;Mackay et al 2014) this growing body of knowledge still cannot explain the reasons for the appearance or demise of the SB and HP.…”

Section: Can We Link Cultural Innovations To Increases In Behavioral mentioning

confidence: 99%

Increasing Behavioral Flexibility? An Integrative Macro-Scale Approach to Understanding the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa

Kandel

Bolus

Bretzke

et al. 2015

J Archaeol Method Theory

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The Middle Stone Age (MSA) of southern Africa represents a period during which anatomically modern humans adopted a series of diverse cultural innovations. Researchers generally attribute these behavioral changes to environmental, neurological, or demographic causes, but none of these alone offers a satisfactory explanation. Even as patterns at site level come into focus, large-scale trends in cultural expansions remain poorly understood. This paper presents different ways to view diachronic datasets from localities in southern Africa and specifically tests hypotheses of environmental and cultural causality. We employ an array of analyses in an attempt to understand large-scale variability observed during the MSA. We evaluated the diversity of stone tool assemblages to model site use, examined transport distances of lithic raw materials to understand patterns of movement, assessed the cultural capacities required to manufacture and use different sets of tools, applied stochastic models to examine the geographic distribution of sites, and reconstructed biome classes and climatic constraints. Our large-scale analysis allowed the research team to integrate different types of information and examine diachronic trends during the MSA. Based on our results, the range of cultural capacity expanded during the MSA. We define cultural capacity as the behavioral potential of a group expressed through the problemsolution distance required to manufacture and use tools. Our dataset also indicates that the actual behavior exhibited by MSA people, their cultural performance as expressed in the archaeological record, is not equivalent to their cultural capacity. Instead we observe that the J Archaeol Method Theory

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Section: Can We Link Cultural Innovations To Increases In Behavioral mentioning

confidence: 99%

Increasing Behavioral Flexibility? An Integrative Macro-Scale Approach to Understanding the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa

Kandel

Bolus

Bretzke

et al. 2015

J Archaeol Method Theory

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show abstract

“…Klipdrift, Henshilwood et al (2014)) and the Cederberg mountains (Klein Kliphuis, Mackay (2010)). Recent dating of Pinnacle Point suggests that the production of backed artefacts may extend back to 71 ka (Brown et al 2012).…”

Section: Late Pleistocene Technology and Occupational Chronology In Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Pleistocene Archaeology and Chronology of Putslaagte 8 (PL8) Rockshelter, Western Cape, South Africa

Mackay

Jacobs

Steele³

2015

J African Arch

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We report on excavations of a small rock shelter -Putslaagte 8 (PL8) -located on the arid interior fringe of South Africa's Fynbos biome. The shelter preserves a long sequence of Holocene and late Pleistocene occupation dating back beyond 75,000 years BP. This paper presents data on the technological, faunal and chronological sequence. Occupation is markedly pulsed and includes three late Pleistocene Later Stone Age (LSA) units (macrolithic, Robberg and early LSA), as well as several distinct Middle Stone Age (MSA) components from Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3-5. Pulsing may reflect the arid and possibly marginal environments in which the shelter is situated, and to that end some elements of the sequence contrast with occupational patterns towards the coast. Viewed in a regional setting PL8 suggests: 1) complementarity of resource movements between the coast and interior in terminal MIS 2; 2) distinctions in material selection, and possibly technology, between the coast and interior in earlier MIS 2; 3) an MSA lasting to at least 40,000 years before present; 4) a weak Howiesons Poort and post-Howiesons Poort in the interior; 5) possibly distinct periods of denticulate manufacture within the MIS 5 MSA; 6) highly localised patterns of material acquisition in the earlier MSA.

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“…HP dates range between roughly 66 ka and 59 ka (34,51,62). As with the SB, some OSL dates of the HP at Diepkloof are significantly older (47,48) than the corpus of dates available from other South African sites, as well as from other OSL dates obtained at the same site (63).…”

Section: Cultural and Chronological Contextsmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…2 F and G) that were predominantly used as components in composite hunting weapons. These tools, although not highly standardized dimensionally or morphologically, were made with a lithic reduction system that was geared toward the production of thin, straight blades, some of which were retouched to make this culture's fossil directeur along with denticulated tools (29,41,51). Raw materials used for the lithic technology were predominantly local or nearlocal in origin, in clear contrast to what is seen for SB bifaces.…”

Section: Cultural and Chronological Contextsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

d’Errico

Banks

Warren

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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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.Middle Stone Age | Still Bay | Howiesons Poort | ecological niche modeling | paleoclimate R esearch on animal behavior has made it clear that culture represents a second inheritance system that may have changed the dynamics of evolution on a broad scale (1-3). Understanding how this process has affected the evolution of our genus is a major challenge in paleoanthropology. In what ways, and through what phases of evolutionary history, has human culture extended beyond culture seen in other species? Are the cultural adaptations and associated cultural innovations that we observe in the archaeological record the direct consequence of our biological evolution, or are they the outcome of mechanisms largely independent of it? In our lineage, if cultural innovations were directly linked to classic Darwinian evolutionary processes, such as isolation, random mutation, selection, and speciation, one would expect a clear correspondence between the emergence of a new species and a related set of novel cultural behaviors. By shaping a new hominin species, natural selection would provide this species with a new cognitive setting resulting in the capacity for particular cultural innovations or behaviors. Such a mechanism would provide the possibility for cultural variability but would narrow its range of expression to the species' biologically dictated potential. Although some would still argue ...

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Klipdrift Shelter, southern Cape, South Africa: preliminary report on the Howiesons Poort layers

Cited by 148 publications

References 68 publications

Increasing Behavioral Flexibility? An Integrative Macro-Scale Approach to Understanding the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa

Increasing Behavioral Flexibility? An Integrative Macro-Scale Approach to Understanding the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa

Pleistocene Archaeology and Chronology of Putslaagte 8 (PL8) Rockshelter, Western Cape, South Africa

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

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