Landscape-scale perspectives on Stone Age behavioural change from the Tankwa Karoo, South Africa

ABSTRACT

Southern Africa is an ecologically highly varied region, yet many generalisations about past human behaviour are drawn from rock shelter sites in coastal and montane Fynbos Biome environments. The Tankwa Karoo region offers the opportunity to extend our archaeological knowledge from the well-researched Western Cape into the arid interior Karoo in order to better capture behavioural variability and identify specific adaptations to more marginal conditions. This research presents the results of off-site surveys in the Tankwa Karoo, which spans the Cape to Karoo transition, mapping surface stone artefacts from the Earlier and Middle Stone Ages. The observed patterns in landscape use and lithic technology for each time-period were tested against a set of expectations based on previous research in the Western Cape and the Upper Karoo. The results indicate that in the Earlier Stone Age the most arid parts of the Tankwa Karoo saw only ephemeral use, with the better-watered mountain fringes preferred. In contrast, various strategies in the Middle Stone Age allowed groups to occupy these marginal parts of the landscape, including new kinds of technological behaviour suggestive of specific adaptations to this environment.

RÉSUMÉ

L'Afrique australe est une région de très grande diversité écologique. Malgré cela, de nombreuses généralisations sur les comportements humains passés sont déduits de données provenant d’abris sous roche dans les environnements côtiers et montagneux du biome Fynbos. La région du Tankwa Karoo offre l'opportunité d'étendre à la région aride du Karoo notre connaissance archéologique de la zone du Cap-Occidental, nous permettant ainsi de mieux capturer la variabilité comportementale et d'identifier des adaptations spécifiques à des conditions environnementales plus marginales. Cet article présente les résultats de campagnes de prospection dans le Tankwa Karoo, région qui comprend la transition entre le Cap et le Karoo ; ces campagnes ont permis de cartographier les artefacts lithiques en surface qui se rapportent à l'Earlier et au Middle Stone Age. Les schémas observés dans la technologie lithique et dans l'organisation du territoire par les groupes humains pour chaque période ont été confrontés à une série de résultats attendus qui avaient été formulés à la base de données disponibles pour le Cap-Occidental et le Upper Karoo. Les résultats indiquent que pendant l'Earlier Stone Age les zones les plus arides du Tankwa Karoo n'ont été occupées que de façon éphémère, et que les franges montagneuses mieux arrosées furent préférées. En revanche, des stratégies variées au Middle Stone Age permirent l’occupation de régions marginales. Ces stratégies comprennent de nouveaux comportements technologiques évoquant des adaptations spécifiques à un tel environnement.

KEYWORDS:

• landscape use
• Middle Stone Age
• South Africa
• surface archaeology
• lithic artefacts

Acknowledgments

This work was completed as part of my doctoral research at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Philip Nigst. Funding for this research came from the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom (Doctoral grant no. 03865) with additional fieldwork funding from St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and the University of Cambridge. During the writing of this manuscript, I was supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship no. 891917 (project TANKwA) through the European Union Horizon 2020 framework.

I am grateful to Matthew Shaw, Candice Koopowitz and other students who assisted with fieldwork and to Louisa Hutten at the University of Cape Town for assistance with field equipment. I thank our hosts in the Tankwa Karoo, Francois and Nicolette van der Merwe, Letsie Coetzee and staff at the Tankwa Karoo National Park and other local landowners for access permissions. I also acknowledge Madelon Tusenius for supplying the image of the handaxe in Figure 7(h), Alice Leplongeon, who provided the French translation of the abstract, and João Cascalheira who gave guidance in using ‘R’. Finally, I thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback that improved this paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emily Hallinan

Emily Hallinan is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behaviour, Faro, Portugal. Her survey work in the Tankwa Karoo formed her PhD research at the University of Cambridge. Her current research investigates Middle Stone Age technological adaptations to arid environments, studying Nubian Levallois lithic technology using geometric morphometric techniques.