Periodic Report Summary 1 - FIRST AMH - ENVI (Assessing the variability of the first Anatomically Modern Humans behavior: Human / environment interaction in Western Europe and South Africa (60,000 – 40,000 years B.P.))
This project aims to enhance our understanding of the diversity of behavior and adaptation strategies of the early Anatomically Modern Humans. By studying stone tools from Upper Pleistocene archaeological record of South Africa and in Europe we are interested in how the earliest fully behaviourally modern humans coped with different natural conditions and structured their societies, including the question of the processes responsible for the early emergence of cognitive “modernity" in the form of the symbolic marking of artifacts.
The Middle Stone Age (MSA) of South Africa in particular took centre-stage in global discussions concerning the location, timing and nature of the origins of behavioural modernity due to Major technological and cultural innovations that appear among hunter-gatherers and to a spectacular series of 60-75,000 year-old finds revealing a cultural sophistication. Some of the most striking artifacts are fragments of engraved ostrich eggshell that are remarkable signs of this change and first evidence of modern behavior by humans, predating similar developments in Europe that occur 40,000 years later with the Eurasian Upper Palaeolithic.
This project aims to explore these cultural changes and discuss the mechanisms underlying them. The goal is to determine how geological resources availability, influenced and shaped techno-economical organization of MSA groups, to identify, against an environment backdrop the range of adaptive solutions engaged by early AMH groups. By testifying of precocious human modern and innovative behavior, the study of MSA contexts provide keys to understand the shift in mentality and adaptive behavior of AMH during the Early Upper Paleolithic in Europe.
To address this we focus on the study of stone tools functionality that are main archives of past behavior from MSA sites located in Western Cape, South Africa, Diepkloof Rock Shelter and Elands Bay Cave .
Given the lack of use-wear reference collection on non flint lithic materials, and the fact that MSA collections includes stone tools made of a wide range of rocks, the first step of the outgoing phase was to establish an extensive reference collection specifically designed for coarse-grained and microcrystalline rocks that will be used to compare with the archaeological materials. Experimental work, involving graduated students from the department of archaeology of University of Cape Town (South Africa) consisted in replicating MSA stone tools by using the same kind of rocks founded in the archaeological record in a wide range of activities and worked materials. Each artifact was used to perform several tasks (e.g. cut, scrape, engrave) on different materials (e.g. bone, wood, animal carcass, etc.).
Some of the most striking artifacts of the equipment innovativeness of the MSA material culture are fragments of engraved ostrich eggshell. These are remarkable signs of this change and first evidence of modern behavior by humans, predating similar developments in Europe that occur 40,000 years later with the Eurasian Upper Palaeolithic. In DRS there are thousands of engraved fragments, showing geometric engraved pattern. Experiments were performed aiming to determine what kind of artifacts and how were eggshells engraved.
The project results have already impact in South African archaeological research, in particular in the scope of the study of Middle Stone Age, and in the archaeological research in Europe as well. Results obtained and recently published allow to refine the technological evolution and cultural innovations of the MSA in South Africa and fuel current debate on the origins of MSA and of modern human behaviour. They provide new research lines for discussing the cultural convergences, regional specificities and behavioral changes that might relate to broader influences at this period of development of the first African Homo sapiens.
Based on the study of stone tools from the main chrono-cultural phases of the MSA, Stillbay (SB) and Howiesons Poort (HP) from Diepkloof Rock Shelter and Elands Bay Cave (western Cape, South Africa) considered as innovative periods due to the appearance of new behaviour (technology land symbolic expressions), results obtained contradict some of the main arguments currently used in discussions of the MSA cultural sequence, requiring the formation of a new explanatory model.
Results suggest that the Early HP form contained the full spectrum of innovations found in later expressions of the HP in terms of raw material provisioning strategies and techno-typological rules. Moreover, use-wear analyses shows that geometric backed tools, considered as one of the innovative spark at the origin of the HP is not related to the adoption of new hunting weapons, but to a new way of conceiving and hafting tools, based on normalized and exchangeable products, used instead as composite tools to process domestic activities. Results also provide valuable functional information on other classes of stone tools such as notched tools that testify of wood working specialization and scaled pieces used to process hard materials. Finally, use-wear evidence on bifacial points considered as cultural fossil markers of the SB and generally assumed to be used as weaponry components show that these artifacts were devoted to domestic processing activities.
Results have implications to the study of the appearance of the AMH in Europe with the Early Upper Paleolithic. By testifying of precocious human modern and innovative behavior, results from the MSA contexts provide keys to understand the shift in mentality and adaptive behavior of AMH in Eurasia in the scope of ongoing projects collaborations on Upper Paleolithic contexts in France.
The project has allowed to widen research network in the form of invitations to integrate other projects teams such as the project “Bushman Rock Shelter”, Middle Stone Age, Limpopo, South Africa, PORRAZ.G. (dir.) CNRS, USR 3336, UMIFRE 25, Institut Français d’Afrique du Sud/Université of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and the project “Varsche Rivier 03 e Ysterfontein”Middle Stone Age, Western Cape, South Africa, STEELE, T. (dir.) Department of Anthropology,University of California, Davis, USA / University of Cape Town.
The Middle Stone Age (MSA) of South Africa in particular took centre-stage in global discussions concerning the location, timing and nature of the origins of behavioural modernity due to Major technological and cultural innovations that appear among hunter-gatherers and to a spectacular series of 60-75,000 year-old finds revealing a cultural sophistication. Some of the most striking artifacts are fragments of engraved ostrich eggshell that are remarkable signs of this change and first evidence of modern behavior by humans, predating similar developments in Europe that occur 40,000 years later with the Eurasian Upper Palaeolithic.
This project aims to explore these cultural changes and discuss the mechanisms underlying them. The goal is to determine how geological resources availability, influenced and shaped techno-economical organization of MSA groups, to identify, against an environment backdrop the range of adaptive solutions engaged by early AMH groups. By testifying of precocious human modern and innovative behavior, the study of MSA contexts provide keys to understand the shift in mentality and adaptive behavior of AMH during the Early Upper Paleolithic in Europe.
To address this we focus on the study of stone tools functionality that are main archives of past behavior from MSA sites located in Western Cape, South Africa, Diepkloof Rock Shelter and Elands Bay Cave .
Given the lack of use-wear reference collection on non flint lithic materials, and the fact that MSA collections includes stone tools made of a wide range of rocks, the first step of the outgoing phase was to establish an extensive reference collection specifically designed for coarse-grained and microcrystalline rocks that will be used to compare with the archaeological materials. Experimental work, involving graduated students from the department of archaeology of University of Cape Town (South Africa) consisted in replicating MSA stone tools by using the same kind of rocks founded in the archaeological record in a wide range of activities and worked materials. Each artifact was used to perform several tasks (e.g. cut, scrape, engrave) on different materials (e.g. bone, wood, animal carcass, etc.).
Some of the most striking artifacts of the equipment innovativeness of the MSA material culture are fragments of engraved ostrich eggshell. These are remarkable signs of this change and first evidence of modern behavior by humans, predating similar developments in Europe that occur 40,000 years later with the Eurasian Upper Palaeolithic. In DRS there are thousands of engraved fragments, showing geometric engraved pattern. Experiments were performed aiming to determine what kind of artifacts and how were eggshells engraved.
The project results have already impact in South African archaeological research, in particular in the scope of the study of Middle Stone Age, and in the archaeological research in Europe as well. Results obtained and recently published allow to refine the technological evolution and cultural innovations of the MSA in South Africa and fuel current debate on the origins of MSA and of modern human behaviour. They provide new research lines for discussing the cultural convergences, regional specificities and behavioral changes that might relate to broader influences at this period of development of the first African Homo sapiens.
Based on the study of stone tools from the main chrono-cultural phases of the MSA, Stillbay (SB) and Howiesons Poort (HP) from Diepkloof Rock Shelter and Elands Bay Cave (western Cape, South Africa) considered as innovative periods due to the appearance of new behaviour (technology land symbolic expressions), results obtained contradict some of the main arguments currently used in discussions of the MSA cultural sequence, requiring the formation of a new explanatory model.
Results suggest that the Early HP form contained the full spectrum of innovations found in later expressions of the HP in terms of raw material provisioning strategies and techno-typological rules. Moreover, use-wear analyses shows that geometric backed tools, considered as one of the innovative spark at the origin of the HP is not related to the adoption of new hunting weapons, but to a new way of conceiving and hafting tools, based on normalized and exchangeable products, used instead as composite tools to process domestic activities. Results also provide valuable functional information on other classes of stone tools such as notched tools that testify of wood working specialization and scaled pieces used to process hard materials. Finally, use-wear evidence on bifacial points considered as cultural fossil markers of the SB and generally assumed to be used as weaponry components show that these artifacts were devoted to domestic processing activities.
Results have implications to the study of the appearance of the AMH in Europe with the Early Upper Paleolithic. By testifying of precocious human modern and innovative behavior, results from the MSA contexts provide keys to understand the shift in mentality and adaptive behavior of AMH in Eurasia in the scope of ongoing projects collaborations on Upper Paleolithic contexts in France.
The project has allowed to widen research network in the form of invitations to integrate other projects teams such as the project “Bushman Rock Shelter”, Middle Stone Age, Limpopo, South Africa, PORRAZ.G. (dir.) CNRS, USR 3336, UMIFRE 25, Institut Français d’Afrique du Sud/Université of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and the project “Varsche Rivier 03 e Ysterfontein”Middle Stone Age, Western Cape, South Africa, STEELE, T. (dir.) Department of Anthropology,University of California, Davis, USA / University of Cape Town.
