Luminescence Dating of Middle Stone Age Sites in South Africa

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This award provides funds for Dr. James Feathers to purchase equipment for the thermolumenescence laboratory at the University of Washington and to analyze a series of samples of archaeological significance. In early 1996 Dr. Feathers conducted geological fieldwork in South Africa and collected sediment samples from a series of sites which contain Howieson's Poort and Middle Stone Age industries. Because these materials lie beyond the range of radiocarbon dating and rest in sediments not amenable to other potassium-argon dating, their age is very poorly known. Dr. Feathers will utilize thermolumenescence dating to address this problem. Anthropologists want to know when, and in what conditions, anatomically and behaviorally modern humans first appeared and recent fossil and genetic evidence points to sub-Saharan Africa. However relevant hominid remains are extremely scarce and the question remains unsettled. Dr. Feathers and other archaeologists have noted an extremely unusual stone industry which appears for a relatively brief interval of time and which may be coincident with the first evidence of anatomically modern humans in the paleontological record. Known as the Howieson's Poort it contains types of tools which did not occur outside of South Africa and which reappear only much later in the archaeological record. In this latter period they are clearly associated with anatomically modern humans. The Howieson's Poort and the Middle Stone Age industry which both proceeds and follows it are very poorly dated. Dr. Feather's work should change this situation. The thermolumenescence (TL) technique is of great potential significance to archaeologists because it can date types of materials and time periods which lie beyond the scope of radiocarbon. However the approach is not developed enough to apply on a mechanistic basis and no laboratory in the United States has a focus on TL dating of archaeological significant materials. Dr. Feathers research is important not only for the archaeological question it addresses but also for its methodological and infrastructural contributions.