Exploration of Middle Stone Age Archaeology in Namaqualand, South Africa

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The study of modern human origins is of fundamental importance for comprehending who we are now and how we came to be this way. Archaeology has a significant role to play in this research, because it is the only field that focuses specifically on the role of culture in human evolution. Most specialists agree that cultural innovations in Africa allowed the ancestors of all living humans to spread throughout the world beginning 50,000 years ago. There is disagreement, however, about the cause of these innovations and the significance of their temporal and spatial patterning. Some researchers suggest that numerous new technologies and behaviors appeared synchronously at the end of the Middle Stone Age (MSA; ~250,000 to ~40,000 years ago), dramatically improving the human adaptive capacity. Others argue that these innovations coalesced gradually throughout the MSA. Resolving such central questions of human cultural evolution requires improved understanding of technological and behavioral developments in the African MSA.With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Teresa Steele and an international team from South Africa, Australia, and the USA will contribute significant new information to this issue by exploring MSA occurrences in the Knersvlakte of Namaqualand, South Africa, an archaeologically undocumented region with a unique environmental setting 265 km N of Cape Town. Artifacts of MSA antiquity are abundant over several kilometers of the modern land surface, and at least three untested rockshelters have been identified which contain numerous MSA artifacts on their adjacent slopes. The project will explore the archaeological potential of the area through test-excavation of at least two of these rockshelter sites, and through analysis of spatial and technological patterns in open-air occurrences. The data produced will help clarify the sequence of cultural innovations in the area and the means by which early modern humans adapted to environmental variation through space and time. This proposal is appropriate for the NSF High-Risk Research in Anthropology Program because it involves the first exploration of a potentially important but presently unknown area. Though the contents of the rockshelters cannot be predicted, the local abundance of MSA artifacts and the richness of archaeological assemblages recovered from similar shelters in regions to the south render the Knersvlakte highly promising. The intellectual merit of this project derives from the fact that, if it is successful, a new window on MSA variation, and therefore modern human origins, will be opened.The project will have broader impacts through training and research opportunities for graduate students. If successful, this proposal will form the basis of a multi-year project that will also provide educational experiences for undergraduate students. The information generated about a crucial time in human prehistory will be of general interest, and as such will provide opportunities to engage the public, and especially to spark interest in younger children who will go on to become the scientists of tomorrow. With this in mind, the project's findings and their significance will be communicated through academic outlets, local community lectures and educational outreach programs.