Lithic Technology in the Earliest Later Stone age at Nasera Rockshelter (Tanzania)

ABSTRACT

The Nasera rockshelter is one of the key sites for our understanding of human occupations of East Africa during the Middle to Late Pleistocene. Excavated by L. Leakey and M. Mehlman, the stratigraphy provides a long sequence of Middle Stone Age, Later Stone Age and Pastoral Neolithic periods. In this paper we carry out a technological study of the Early Later Stone Age levels (levels 8 / 9-11) excavated by M. Mehlman. These levels, clearly Later Stone Age, are characterized by a break from the operational schemes of the Middle Stone Age (Levallois/Discoid) and an abundance of bipolar and laminar methods. There are few tools and the backed pieces appear from the most recent of the levels studied (8/9). Following this study, its relationship with the Mumba Industry may need to be revisited.

KEYWORDS:

• Later Stone Age
• Lithic Technology
• Nasera
• Tanzania
• Serengeti

Acknowledgments

We want to thank COSTECH (Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology) for the permission to carry out the work and the Department of Antiquities of Tanzania for its support. We want to thank the staffs of Olduvai Gorge Museum, especially, to its incharge, Mr. Ladislaus Kashaija Domician and Wesley Masaki, its curator. Also, we want to thank the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority for allowing us to conduct our study at Nasera, and especially, Eng. Joshua Mwankunda, Manager for Cultural Heritage and Geopark. Moreover, we would like to thank TOPPP’s team members for their help and support. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on Contributors

Irene Solano-Megías is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Prehistory and Archeology of the National University of Distance Education (UNED, Madrid). Her research focuses on the study of strategies and knapping methods of Homo sapiens during the Middle Stone Age in Northern Tanzania of Mumba and Nasera rockshelters and open-air sites such as Victoria Cabrera Site (VCS) and Dorothy Garrod Site (DGS) in the Olduvai Gorge.

José-Manuel Maíllo-Fernández (PhD, 2003, UNED) is a Lecturer in the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology of the National University of Distance Education (UNED, Madrid). His main research interests lie in understanding the earliest Modern Human groups in East Africa and the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition in Europe. Since 2016, he leads the Ndutupai project: The MSA in northern Tanzania.

Juan Marín is a PhD candidate in the Museum Nationel d’Histoire Naturell (Paris, France) and the Universitá degli Studi di Ferrara (Italy). He is a specialist in zooarchaeology and taphonomy centered in the study of faunal assemblages of Middle Palaeolithic sites of Iberian Peninsula, France and East Africa. Working on experimental archaeology creating referential frameworks to analyse faunal assemblages. He is a member of the Sierra de Atapuerca research team, member of Ndutupai project and participant in the research projects of CNRS Le monde moustérien méditerranéen entre Rhône et Pyrénées and the Abri du Maras (Saint-Martin d’Ardèche), and the Primeros Pobladores de Extremadura research team.

David Manuel Martín-Perea is a PhD from the Department of Palaeobiology (National Natural Sciences Museum in Madrid, MNCN, Madrid). His greatest interest as a researcher is the symbiosis between Taphonomy and Geoarchaeology, since the combination of these two disciplines provides excellent tools to analyze site formation. He is currently working on a PhD analyzing taphonomically and geologically the Miocene mammal sites of Batallones Butte (Madrid, Spain). At the same time, he collaborates as a geoarchaeologist at Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania), Nasera (Tanzania) and Calvero de la Higuera sites (Madrid, Spain).

Audax Z. P. Mabulla (PhD, 1996, University of Florida) is a Professor in the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies of the University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and he was Director General of the National Museums of Tanzania since 2013–2019. His main research interests are Palaeolithic Archaeology, Human Evolution, Rock Art, hunter-forager ecology, as well as in the management of cultural heritage. He currently acts as co-director of a number of projects such as: Moving Frontiers: Origin and Spread of Pastoralism in East Africa; The Olduvai Paleoanthropology and Paleoecology Project (TOPPP); Ndutupai: The MSA in northern Tanzania and the Hadza Hunter-gatherer Ecology and Energetics Project.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities under Grant HAR2015-64407-P MINECO/FEDER UE, Instituto de Patrimonio Cultural de España, Foundation PALARQ and UNED.