The Middle and Later Stone Age in the Iringa Region of southern Tanzania

Abstract

Fossil, genetic and archaeological data all confirm an African origin for our own species, Homo sapiens, during the Middle Stone Age (MSA) around 200,000 years ago. Somewhere around 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, descendants of these first modern people dispersed out of Africa and ultimately colonized the entire world. This parallels the beginning of the Later Stone Age (LSA) where microlithic stone tool assemblages replace the flake tools and points of the MSA. New research in the Iringa Region in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania may offer a way to study the MSA and how it changed to the LSA. Three seasons of survey and excavation (in 2006, 2008 and 2010) have demonstrated that Iringa might contain a more or less continuous archaeological record from the late Acheulean around 500,000 years ago to the present. It thus offers a new opportunity to trace the evolution of the technology and behaviour of modern humans both prior to, and after, the Out of Africa 2 dispersal. Excavations have uncovered MSA occupation layers in three areas at one rockshelter, Magubike. LSA occupations are stratified above them in two of these areas. At a second rockshelter, Mlambalasi, there is a modern human skeleton, in a Pleistocene LSA context. This paper reviews this new evidence and what it might state about questions of modern human origins and dispersals.