Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Profile of Professor Tobias
- List of participants
- Foreword
- Address
- Keynote address
- Searching for common ground in palaeoanthropology, archaeology and genetics
- The history of a special relationship: prehistoric terminology and lithic technology between the French and South African research traditions
- Essential attributes of any technologically competent animal
- Significant tools and signifying monkeys: the question of body techniques and elementary actions on matter among apes and early hominids
- Tools and brains: which came first?
- Environmental changes and hominid evolution: what the vegetation tells us
- Implications of the presence of African ape-like teeth in the Miocene of Kenya
- Dawn of hominids: understanding the ape-hominid dichotomy
- The impact of new excavations from the Cradle of Humankind on our understanding of the evolution of hominins and their cultures
- Stone Age signatures in northernmost South Africa: early archaeology in the Mapungubwe National Park and vicinity
- Vertebral column, bipedalism and freedom of the hands
- Characterising early Homo: cladistic, morphological and metrical analyses of the original Plio-Pleistocene specimens
- Early Homo, ‘robust’ australopithecines and stone tools at Kromdraai, South Africa
- The origin of bone tool technology and the identification of early hominid cultural traditions
- Contribution of genetics to the study of human origins 276
- An overview of the patterns of behavioural change in Africa and Eurasia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene
- From the tropics to the colder climates: contrasting faunal exploitation adaptations of modern humans and Neanderthals
- New neighbours: interaction and image-making during the West European Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition
- Late Mousterian lithic technology: its implications for the pace of the emergence of behavioural modernity and the relationship between behavioural modernity and biological modernity
- Exploring and quantifying technological differences between the MSA I, MSA II and Howieson's Poort at Klasies River
- Stratigraphic integrity of the Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave
- Testing and demonstrating the stratigraphic integrity of artefacts from MSA deposits at Blombos Cave, South Africa
- From tool to symbol: the behavioural context of intentionally marked ostrich eggshell from Diepkloof, Western Cape
- Chronology of the Howieson's Poort and Still Bay techno-complexes: assessment and new data from luminescence
- Subsistence strategies in the Middle Stone Age at Sibudu Cave: the microscopic evidence from stone tool residues
- Speaking with beads: the evolutionary significance of personal ornaments
- Personal names index
- Subject index
Exploring and quantifying technological differences between the MSA I, MSA II and Howieson's Poort at Klasies River
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 June 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Profile of Professor Tobias
- List of participants
- Foreword
- Address
- Keynote address
- Searching for common ground in palaeoanthropology, archaeology and genetics
- The history of a special relationship: prehistoric terminology and lithic technology between the French and South African research traditions
- Essential attributes of any technologically competent animal
- Significant tools and signifying monkeys: the question of body techniques and elementary actions on matter among apes and early hominids
- Tools and brains: which came first?
- Environmental changes and hominid evolution: what the vegetation tells us
- Implications of the presence of African ape-like teeth in the Miocene of Kenya
- Dawn of hominids: understanding the ape-hominid dichotomy
- The impact of new excavations from the Cradle of Humankind on our understanding of the evolution of hominins and their cultures
- Stone Age signatures in northernmost South Africa: early archaeology in the Mapungubwe National Park and vicinity
- Vertebral column, bipedalism and freedom of the hands
- Characterising early Homo: cladistic, morphological and metrical analyses of the original Plio-Pleistocene specimens
- Early Homo, ‘robust’ australopithecines and stone tools at Kromdraai, South Africa
- The origin of bone tool technology and the identification of early hominid cultural traditions
- Contribution of genetics to the study of human origins 276
- An overview of the patterns of behavioural change in Africa and Eurasia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene
- From the tropics to the colder climates: contrasting faunal exploitation adaptations of modern humans and Neanderthals
- New neighbours: interaction and image-making during the West European Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition
- Late Mousterian lithic technology: its implications for the pace of the emergence of behavioural modernity and the relationship between behavioural modernity and biological modernity
- Exploring and quantifying technological differences between the MSA I, MSA II and Howieson's Poort at Klasies River
- Stratigraphic integrity of the Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave
- Testing and demonstrating the stratigraphic integrity of artefacts from MSA deposits at Blombos Cave, South Africa
- From tool to symbol: the behavioural context of intentionally marked ostrich eggshell from Diepkloof, Western Cape
- Chronology of the Howieson's Poort and Still Bay techno-complexes: assessment and new data from luminescence
- Subsistence strategies in the Middle Stone Age at Sibudu Cave: the microscopic evidence from stone tool residues
- Speaking with beads: the evolutionary significance of personal ornaments
- Personal names index
- Subject index
Summary
Abstract
Inferences drawn from the study of the variability in sets of stone artefacts are central to the debate on the emergence of modern behaviour in the Middle and Late Pleistocene in Africa. Some argue that the Middle Stone Age demonstrates little variability while others emphasise the clear temporal and regional patterning. These contrary perceptions result from using methodologies that highlight different aspects of the variability. How the methodologies influence the detection and interpretation of variability is discussed with reference to the Klasies River site. This artefact sequence has been assessed as reflecting typological and technological stasis with marked change in the sequence only recognisable in the Howieson's Poort sub-stage. The study reported here suggests that technological variables indicate that the MSA I, MSA II and Howieson's Poort represent distinct technological conventions or technocomplexes aimed at the production of different end-products. In the MSA I, a blade strategy dominates, in the MSA II a Levallois-like production strategy is inferred while the Howieson's Poort again represents a blade reduction strategy with a more extended chaîne opératoire than the other sub-stages. To clarify the differences between the MSA I and MSA II, univariate and multivariate statistical analyses of the continuous variables of the end-products, points and blades were undertaken. This confirmed and quantified that the MSA I can be distinguished from the MSA II in terms of technological characteristics. It is evident that the platform characteristics of the end-products are time-sensitive indicators of differences between the sub-stages. It is important that the changes in the sequence at Klasies River are correlated with other Middle Stone Age occurrences. It is only when regional patterning is clarified that the issue of modern behaviour can be addressed in terms of the variability in Middle Stone Age artefacts.
Résumé
La variabilité des assemblages lithiques est au coeur du débat sur l’émergence des comportements moderne au cours du Pléistocène moyen et supérieur en Afrique. Certains auteurs considèrent que le Middle Stone Age (MSA) se caractérise par une faible variabilité alors que d'autres identifient des différences diachroniques et régionales. Ces visions opposées sont la conséquence des méthodes d'analyse, chacune mettant en évidence certains aspects de la variabilité entre assemblages.
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- Information
- From Tools to SymbolsFrom Early Hominids to Modern Humans, pp. 418 - 440Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2005