A generic MSA: what problems will it solve and what problems will it create?

ABSTRACT

This paper argues against recognising a ‘generic Middle Stone Age (MSA)’ as a formal taxon for use in African prehistoric archaeology. Surveying 46 Eastern African MSA stone tool assemblages reveals wild mismatches between what an undifferentiated or ‘generic’ MSA is supposed to do and what it almost certainly will do. A generic MSA will reduce African prehistoric archaeology’s potential contribution to human origins research. If one were searching for a way in which to make Africa’s stone tool evidence irrelevant to human origins research, then one could hardly do better than to offer archaeologists a generic MSA to which to assign lithic assemblages. At the editors’ invitation, the paper also comments briefly on several of the other contributions to this special issue of Azania.

RÉSUMÉ

Cet article s’oppose à l’idée de proposer l’utilisation d’un taxon formel intitulé ‘Middle Stone Age (MSA) générique’ en archéologie préhistorique africaine. L’étude de 46 assemblages d’outils en pierre du MSA d’Afrique de l’Est révèle des écarts considérables entre ce qu’un MSA indifférencié ou ‘générique’ est censé accomplir et ce qu’il en résultera presque certainement. Un MSA générique diminuera la contribution que peut faire l’archéologie préhistorique africaine aux recherches sur les origines humaines. Si l’on cherchait un moyen de s’assurer que les données sur les outils en pierre en Afrique n’aient aucune pertinence pour la recherche sur les origines humaines, on ne pourrait guère mieux s’y prendre qu’en offrant aux archéologues un MSA générique auquel attribuer les assemblages lithiques. À l’invitation des éditeurs, cet article commente également brièvement sur plusieurs autres contributions à ce numéro spécial d’Azania.

KEYWORDS:

• Eastern Africa
• Middle Stone Age
• ‘generic MSA’
• lithic analysis

Acknowledgements

I thank Manuel Will and Eleanor Scerri for inviting me to participate in this symposium, Christian Tryon for his comments on an early draft and Peter Mitchell for formatting the text. Opinions expressed herein are mine alone and any errors of fact my responsibility.

Notes

1 ‘Industry’ enjoys the widest usage among the various terms that archaeologists use for such assemblage-groups (e.g. culture, culture complex, technological complex, technocomplex, industrial complex).

2 In 2008, I coined the term ‘Kibish Industry’ for some lithic assemblages associated with early Homo sapiens fossils from Ethiopia’s Lower Omo River Valley (Shea 2008). I did not need to do so, but wanted to see if my actions elicited any ‘pushback’ from colleagues and whether anybody else would adopt the term in their own research. Much as expected, no pushback occurred. Nor has the term ‘Kibish Industry’ come into wide usage.

3 https://sites.google.com/a/stonybrook.edu/john-j-shea/home.

4 The EAPSS was too large to print in Prehistoric Stone Tools of Eastern Africa: A Guide (Shea 2020). It appears on the publisher’s website for the book, https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/prehistoric-stone-tools-of-eastern-africa/D404D5EFBB507CC3B308AC0B4B852313. A periodically updated (and somewhat easier-to-find) version appears on my personal website, https://sites.google.com/a/stonybrook.edu/john-j-shea/eastern-african-stone-tools-east-typology.

5 Additional samples identified as ‘transitional’ ESA/MSA (N = 6) and MSA/LSA (N = 12) could increase this number to 64, but it seems best to conduct this analysis with the smaller number of MSA sensu stricto samples.

6 The Stoneworking Modes that appear in all, or nearly all, the MSA sample assemblages (i.e. stone percussors, bipolar cores, short non-hierarchical cores, scrapers, notches, denticulates etc.) are those that appear in virtually all stone tool assemblages from every period.

7 One could also argue that making a generic MSA available as a diagnosis could encourage colleagues now controlling lithic collections excavated long ago that still languish unpublished to finally publish them. However, it is probably far easier and more equitable to just stop giving them grant money until they do so.

8 Surface collections have value as teaching collections, but that’s about it. That such a collection is classified as ‘non-Aterian’ could simply result from sample error, i.e. no tanged pieces were visible on the surface when the collection was made.

9 Researchers currently working in the Eastern Mediterranean’s Levant use Bordes’ typology pro forma (to describe individual artefacts and calculate various typological and technological indices), but they employ other criteria to make meaningful distinctions among Levantine Middle Palaeolithic assemblages (Shea 2013b).

10 Most of the ‘grand challenges’ these papers name concern Holocene events and processes. Only one, Cognition, behaviour and identity, specifically invokes Pleistocene evidence and then in the service of research into the origin of ‘modern human behaviour’. Sigh (Shea 2011). (Tough luck, one supposes, for everyone investigating Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other hominins). Subjects on which palaeoanthropological archaeologists are uniquely positioned to contribute, such as long-term evolutionary processes and behavioural differences among extinct hominins, appear nowhere among these grand challenges.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John J. Shea

John J. Shea is Professor of Anthropology at Stony Brook University (New York, United States of America). His research investigates how change and variability among stone tools relate to hominin evolution. He has conducted archaeological research in the East Mediterranean Levant (Israel and Jordan) and in eastern Africa (Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania). His current research project, Survival Archaeology, uses insights from bushcraft and survival skills to develop hypotheses about prehistoric human behaviour.