Abstract
In southern Africa, key technologies and symbolic behaviors develop as early as the later Middle Stone Age in MIS5. These innovations arise independently in various places, contexts and forms, until their full expression during the Still Bay and the Howiesons Poort. The Middle Stone Age sequence from Diepkloof Rock Shelter, on the West Coast of the region, preserves archaeological proxies that help unravelling the cultural processes at work. This unit yields one of the oldest abstract engraving so far discovered in Africa, in the form of a rhomboid marking on the cortical surface of an ungulate long bone shaft. The comprehensive analysis of the lithic artefacts and ochre pieces found in association with the engraved bone documents the transport of rocks over long distance (>20km), the heat treatment of silcrete, the coexistence of seven lithic reduction strategies (including the production of bladelets and the manufacture of unifacial and bifacial points), the use of adhesives and the processing of ochre. At Diepkloof, the appearance of engraving practices take place in a context that demonstrates a shift in rock procurement and a diversification in lithic reduction strategies, suggesting that these behavioral practices acted as a cultural answer to cope with new environmental and/or socioeconomic circumstances. We argue that the innovations later found during the Still Bay and the Howiesons Poort were already in the making during the MIS5 pre-Still Bay, though not all the benefits were yet taken advantage of by the populations.
Highlights
From ca. 300,000 years onwards, the African continent experienced the development of the Middle Stone Age (MSA), a period that document the emergence of practices that are defining features of modern hunter-gatherers’ societies (e.g. Bouzzougar et al, 2007; Conard, 2008; Henshilwood et al, 2002, 2004; McBrearty and Brooks, 2000; Wadley, 2015; Watts et al, 2016)
We develop a model based on the long and well-stratified MIS5-4 sequence of Diepkloof Rock Shelter in South Africa
Using actualistic observations on human marks (e.g. Galán & DomínguezRodrigo, 2013; Fritz, 1999; Maté-Gonzalez et al, 2015; Soulier & Morin, 2016; Thiébaut et al, 2019), we argue that the anatomical position, length and orientation of the incisions, as well as the way they intersect each other allow us to confidently exclude the possibility that they result from carcass processing activities
Summary
From ca. 300,000 years onwards, the African continent experienced the development of the Middle Stone Age (MSA), a period that document the emergence of practices that are defining features of modern hunter-gatherers’ societies (e.g. Bouzzougar et al, 2007; Conard, 2008; Henshilwood et al, 2002, 2004; McBrearty and Brooks, 2000; Wadley, 2015; Watts et al, 2016). Our new data from the Pre-SB Lynn document a set of innovative behaviors that were yet not recognized (Porraz et al, 2013; 2014), such as the engraving of geometric form(s), the heat-treatment of silcrete, the production of bladelets, the manufacture of bifacial pieces and the use of adhesive.
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