Understanding Early Later Stone Age technology at a landscape-scale: evidence from the open-air locality Uitspankraal 7 (UPK7) in the Western Cape, South Africa

Marika A. Low · Alex Mackay · Natasha Phillips

21 citations0/0 files storedAzania Archaeological Research in Africa

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology Archaeological and Geological Studies Archaeology and Rock Art Studies

Abstract

Understandings of past human behaviour in southern Africa are hampered by a site-based approach to prehistoric technological systems that relies on spatially isolated samples from one or a few key ‘type-sites’. Lithic technological behaviour, however, was a landscape-scale process with raw material acquisition, reduction, transportation, use, maintenance and discard taking place at varied locations. This study takes a landscape approach to the investigation of Early Later Stone Age (ELSA) technology on the Doring River by exploring two points in what we believe to be one system. It compares data from an open-air lithic scatter from Uitspankraal 7 (UPK7) located on the Doring, the major river and lithic source in the area, with a published rockshelter sample from Putslaagte 8 (PL8) located 2 km from the Doring and 15 km to the northwest of UPK7. Differences between the two assemblages support a scenario in which hornfels blades and flakes were produced at the river and transported into the surrounding landscape, with limited transportation of cores. Intriguingly little evidence of quartz-bipolar reduction was found in the open-air sample at UPK7, raising the possibility that different ELSA technological components were organised in distinct patterns across the landscape. Results suggest that the composition of ELSA assemblages is highly situational, with proportions of quartz and/or bipolar technology, for instance, appearing responsive to local context. Overall, this study highlights the importance of taking a landscape-orientated approach to investigating the nature and cause of continuity and variability in the archaeological record. Such an approach will inevitably lead to a more comprehensive understanding of early LSA technology, behaviour and land-use patterns.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 21 citations exist upstream.

References

2003The Archaeology of Southern Africa 1999Human Beginnings in South Africa: Uncovering the Secrets of the Stone Age 2006Blade technology and tool forms in the Middle Stone Age of South Africa: the Howiesons Poort and post-Howiesons Poort at Rose Cottage Cave 1968Background to Evolution in Africa.2014Coalescence and fragmentation in the late Pleistocene archaeology of southernmost Africa 2002Small Things Remembered: Origins of Early Microlithic Industries in Sub‐Saharan Africa 2012Blade production ∼500 thousand years ago at Kathu Pan 1, South Africa: support for a multiple origins hypothesis for early Middle Pleistocene blade technologies 2012Border Cave and the beginning of the Later Stone Age in South Africa

Cited by

2018Open-air preservation of miniaturised lithics: experimental research in the Cederberg Mountains, southern Africa

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.