Becoming Human: Archaeology of the Sub-Saharan Middle Stone Age

Abstract

Introduction The Sub-Saharan Middle Stone Age (MSA) is the place and time where humans evolved into anatomically, genetically and behaviourally modern beings. Whether this was a unique evolutionary trajectory is being debated, but it is now widely accepted as being true for the particular period and region under discussion. It is in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) that we increasingly find that multidisciplinary data gained from palaeoanthropology, genetic studies and archaeology converge, hence closing the gap between the evolution of behavioural complexity and the anatomical and genetic origins of our species, estimated at ~100–200 ka (kiloannum, a unit of time equal to one thousand years). Separate chapters in this work discuss the fossil and gene records. It is, however, only through archaeology that we gain glimpses into the cognitive, behavioural and cultural evolution of our species, and this is the theme of our chapter. SSA is here understood as most of the African landmass south of 15° N (Map 1.8.1). Between the 1860s and 1920s, the Stone Age archaeology of the region was recorded mostly by amateur collectors, simply comparing the range of found artifacts with those recovered in Europe. European terms such as “Palaeolithic” and “Neolithic” were applied, reflecting the assumption that the stone tools of the region had the same cultural origins as their European counterparts (Breuil 1930; Burkitt 1928). By the late 1920s, it became clear that the SSA archaeological record could not be accommodated within the European model. A separate scheme, comprising the Earlier Stone Age (ESA), MSA and Later Stone Age (LSA), was devised to emphasise its distinctiveness from the European Lower, Middle and Upper Palaeolithic. This scheme was originally implemented based on characteristics of stone-tool assemblages from South Africa (Goodwin & van Riet Lowe 1929), but was endorsed for the larger region in 1955 during the Pan African Congress (Clark 1957).