Africa has the longest record - some 2.5 million years - of human occupation of any continent. For nearly all of this time, its inhabitants have made tools from stone and have acquired their food ...from its rich wild plant and animal resources. Archaeological research in Africa is crucial for understanding the origins of humans and the diversity of hunter-gatherer ways of life. This book is a synthesis of the record left by Africa's earliest hominin inhabitants and hunter-gatherers, combining the insights of archaeology with those of other disciplines, such as genetics and palaeo-environmental science. African evidence is critical to important debates, such as the origins of stone tool making, the emergence of recognisably modern forms of cognition and behaviour, and the expansion of successive hominins from Africa to other parts of the world.
In 1996, three pieces of iron oxide and one of iron hydroxide were recovered from the archaeological site of Twin Rivers in central Zambia. These minerals are described and their significance ...discussed as possible evidence for pigment use--and, by extension, symbol use--in the Middle Pleistocene. The collection and processing of iron and manganese minerals were intentional and repeated activities undertaken by Middle Pleistocene hominids at Twin Rivers.
The chaîne opératoire (CO) approach is a well-established method for the analysis of tool creation, use and discard, and associated cognitive processes. Its effectiveness in respect of cognition, ...however, is occasionally challenged. We briefly review key critiques of its epistemological and methodological limitations and consider alternative options. We suggest a new epistemological position and methodology which can link CO with alternative cognitive models and with the true complexity inherent in the stone tool archaeological record. Perception-action and embodied cognition theory are the proposed foundations of a new epistemology that allows us to reject the concept of thought processes underlying tool-making sequences as static entities selected from memory. Instead, they are described as arising, changing and flowing with and through bodily activity, or as the products of constant interaction between body, mind and environment. They are better understood as ongoing processes of situated task-structuring rather than as objectified concepts or symbols. The new methodology is designed to analyse individual tool-making processes rather than their products. We use a pilot study to explore how it can highlight variations in the gestural processes that structure different technologies and thus indicate potential differences in the associated cognitive strategies of the various tool-makers concerned.
This paper argues that the origins of language can be detected one million years ago, if not earlier, in the archaeological record of
Homo erectus
. This controversial claim is based on a broad ...theoretical and evidential foundation with language defined as communication based on symbols rather than grammar. Peirce’s theory of signs (semiotics) underpins our analysis with its progression of signs (icon, index and symbol) used to identify artefact forms operating at the level of symbols. We draw on generalisations about the multiple social roles of technology in pre-industrial societies and on the contexts tool-use among non-human primates to argue for a deep evolutionary foundation for hominin symbol use. We conclude that symbol-based language is expressed materially in arbitrary social conventions that permeate the technologies of
Homo erectus
and its descendants, and in the extended planning involved in the caching of tools and in the early settlement of island Southeast Asia.
Mankind’s utter dependency on technology extends back approximately three million years to the first stone tools, but it was only with the innovation of hafting, some 300,000 years ago, that ...technology took its first modern form and revolutionised our social and economic lives. The development of handles and shafts, which were added to some tools previously made of single materials and hand-held, made the tools not only more efficient but improved their makers’ chances of survival by making the quest for food more productive. This book brings together evidence for the cognitive, social, and technological foundations necessary for the development of hafting to form a speculative theory about this revolutionary innovation. The creation of tools with handles required considerable planning based on an expert understanding of the properties of the raw materials involved, a form of early engineering. Yet it was the ability to envisage the final, integrated form of the tool which underpinned the remarkable novelty of hafting, one which had massive implications for the human species and which laid the foundations for the technology we rely on today.
Herries provides a timely review of the archaeological and dating evidence of the transition from the Acheulean to the Middle Stone Age (MSA) in southern Africa, however, in relation to the site of ...Twin Rivers, Zambia he makes several fundamental errors of interpretation that demand correction. The stratigraphic sequence of the site is admittedly complex, but it deserves a more careful analysis than that offered by Herries. This detailed response by the most recent excavator of the site addresses Herries critique by placing the site in its historical context and then dealing with the central issue of the association of dated speleothem with the surviving archaeological deposits. Herries is shown to have mistakenly combined the dates from two separate cave passages and to have misunderstood the published sections, plans, and taphonomic assessment of each excavation area. His reinterpretation of the site as being significantly younger than published is based on a conflation of unrelated data.
Earth pigments figure prominently in debates about signal evolution among later Homo. Most archaeologists consider such behavior to postdate ∼300 Ka. To evaluate claims for Fauresmith and Acheulean ...pigments in South Africa’s Northern Cape Province, extending back 1.1 Ma (Beaumont and Bednarik 2013), we reexamined collections from Kathu Pan 1, Wonderwerk Cave, and Canteen Kopje. We report and describe materials where we are confident as to a pigment status. We found (i) compelling evidence of absence in all but the youngest Acheulean contexts, (ii) definite but irregular use in Fauresmith contexts from at least 500 Ka, (iii) widespread and regular use within this limited area by ∼300 Ka, coeval with circumstantial evidence for pigment transport over considerable distances and use in fire-lit environments. These findings are used to evaluate predictions derived from two competing hypotheses addressing the evolution of group ritual, the “female cosmetic coalitions” hypothesis (Power 2009) and the “cheap-but-honest signals” hypothesis (Kuhn 2014), finding that the former accounts for a greater range of the observations. The findings underscore the wider behavioral significance of the Fauresmith as an industry transitional between the Acheulean and the Middle Stone Age.
The apparent antiquity of pigments recovered in 1996 at the late Middle Pleistocene archaeological site of Twin Rivers, central Zambia coincides with the shift toward composite tool technology. The ...pigments and their significance are discussed.
The fashioning of stone inserts for composite tools by blunting flakes and blades is a technique usually associated with Late Pleistocene modern humans. Recent reports from two sites in south central ...Africa (Twin Rivers and Kalambo Falls) suggest that this backed tool technology originated in the later Middle Pleistocene with early or “archaic”Homo sapiens . This paper investigates these claims critically from the perspective of the potential mixing of Middle and Later Stone Age deposits at the two sites and the possible creation of misleading assemblages. The review shows that backed tools form a statistically minor, but technologically significant feature of the early Middle Stone Age of south central Africa. They first appear in the Lupemban industry at approximately 300ka and remain an element of the Middle Stone Age technological repertoire of the region. Comparisons are made with early backed tool assemblages of east Africa and with the much younger Howiesons Poort industry of southern Africa. The paper concludes that Lupemban tools lack the standardization of the Howiesons Poort backed pieces, but form part of a regionally distinctive and diverse assemblage of heavy and light duty tools. Some modern-like behaviours appear to have emerged by the later Middle Pleistocene in south central Africa.
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