Abstract
Lithic technologies have been used to trace dispersals of early human populations within and beyond Africa. Convergence in lithic systems has the potential to confound such interpretations, implying connections between unrelated groups. Due to their reductive nature, stone artefacts are unusually prone to this chance appearance of similar forms in unrelated populations. Here we present data from the South African Middle Stone Age sites Uitpanskraal 7 and Mertenhof suggesting that Nubian core reduction systems associated with Late Pleistocene populations in North Africa and potentially with early human migrations out of Africa in MIS 5 also occur in southern Africa during early MIS 3 and with no clear connection to the North African occurrence. The timing and spatial distribution of their appearance in southern and northern Africa implies technological convergence, rather than diffusion or dispersal. While lithic technologies can be a critical guide to human population flux, their utility in tracing early human dispersals at large spatial and temporal scales with stone artefact types remains questionable.
Highlights
Similarities in material culture among populations can arise by three pathways: convergence, dispersal or diffusion
Dispersal denotes the physical movement, migration or relocation of a group of people from one area to another together carrying with them their material culture, while cultural diffusion involves the movement of ideas or objects from their place of origin to another population in a different area via PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone
We concentrate here on the Middle Stone Age (MSA) parts of that sequence (Table 1), as it is during the MSA that the Afro-Arabian Nubian techno-complex occurs
Summary
Similarities in material culture among populations can arise by three pathways: convergence (independent innovation), dispersal (movement of people) or diffusion (movement of ideas/ objects or cultural exchange). Most similarities in material culture between two or more samples have been explained through the latter two mechanisms [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10], though the problem of convergence has long been appreciated [11,12,13]. Dispersal denotes the physical movement, migration or relocation of a group of people from one area to another together carrying with them (parts of) their material culture, while cultural diffusion involves the movement of ideas or objects from their place of origin to another population in a different area via PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0131824. Dispersal denotes the physical movement, migration or relocation of a group of people from one area to another together carrying with them (parts of) their material culture, while cultural diffusion involves the movement of ideas or objects from their place of origin to another population in a different area via PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0131824 June 30, 2015
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