Mitigating Mishaps: Diachronic Trends in Handaxe Shaping and Knapping Error Management at Amanzi Springs Area 2 (Eastern Cape, South Africa)

ABSTRACT

Tracing the acquisition of knapping skill in the Acheulian technocomplex is complicated by incomplete records of lithic production. Some studies have turned attention to examining knapping errors as a means of identifying signatures of toolmaking expertise in the deep past. Such insights have recently been applied to handaxes from the Area 1 spring eye at Amanzi Springs, which have suggested this locality functioned as a Large Cutting Tool workshop. Here we extend our analysis to handaxes from the Surfaces 2/3 (∼530–480 ka), Surface 1, and Cutting 5 (<480–408 ka) excavation areas within the Area 2 spring eye, which focuses on the development and frequency of step and hinge fractures and the management of cross-sectional shape. We identify differences in both the flaking strategies and the mitigation of knapping errors that demonstrate a gradual adaptation to local quartzite raw material and the acquisition of technological skill through time.

KEYWORDS:

• Technological skill
• knapping errors
• handaxes
• quartzite
• Amanzi Springs
• Acheulian

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the landowners, Phillip and Clyde Niven for granting us access to the Amanzi Springs archaeological site. All research was carried out through permit number 2/2/AMP-PERMIT/16/09/110 issued by the Eastern Cape Provincial Heritage Authority (ECPHRA). We would like to thank Sello Mokhanya for his assistance with permitting at ECPHRA. We are also grateful to Celeste Booth from the Albany Museum in Makhanda for her continued support of our research. We are further grateful for the support of the residents of Amanzi Town, including Regina Komazi, for their continued support of our research. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and improving the quality of our manuscript.

Disclosure Statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project (DP170101139 and DP200100194) to AIRH, and a National Geographic Explorer grant to AIRH, MVC and AFB.