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Identifying Raw Material Transportation and Reduction Strategies from the Lithic Scatters at Elandsdrift Farm (Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site), South Africa

Identifying Raw Material Transportation and Reduction Strategies from the Lithic Scatters at... The Cradle of Humankind World Heritage site in South Africa is renowned for its karstic cave systems, which have yielded extensive fossil and stone tool assemblages dating to the Plio-Pleistocene period. The archaeological record from these caves has provided significant evidence for the evolution of lithic technology in southern Africa. Open-air sites have also been documented in this region, although they rarely receive scientific attention due to their lack of spatial and stratigraphic contexts. However, archaeological research has demonstrated that lithic production strategies were organized through landscape-scale constraints including the availability of raw materials and the energetic costs of their transport. As such, the study of open-air Stone Age sites in the Cradle of Humankind can potentially offer insight into the relationships between raw material procurement and reduction processes in this region. Here, we present a case study from the open-air locality of Elandsdrift Farm, which preserves a palimpsest of Earlier and Middle Stone Age lithic materials. While the chronological and spatial contexts of this locality present significant interpretative challenges, the Elandsdrift Farm lithic materials are not without scientific value. A landscape archaeological approach is employed to explore the influence of raw material transport on tool-making. Trends in core reduction intensity and flaking efficiency suggest that landform ruggedness and distances traveled to procure raw materials significantly influenced lithic production strategies throughout the Early to Middle Pleistocene. Despite the contextual challenges presented by open-air localities, landscape archaeological methods can inform the economic aspects of lithic scatters in this region, which cannot be easily inferred from archaeological assemblages in cave contexts. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png African Archaeological Review Springer Journals

Identifying Raw Material Transportation and Reduction Strategies from the Lithic Scatters at Elandsdrift Farm (Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site), South Africa

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References (115)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
Subject
Social Sciences; Archaeology; Anthropology; Regional and Cultural Studies
ISSN
0263-0338
eISSN
1572-9842
DOI
10.1007/s10437-019-09331-3
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The Cradle of Humankind World Heritage site in South Africa is renowned for its karstic cave systems, which have yielded extensive fossil and stone tool assemblages dating to the Plio-Pleistocene period. The archaeological record from these caves has provided significant evidence for the evolution of lithic technology in southern Africa. Open-air sites have also been documented in this region, although they rarely receive scientific attention due to their lack of spatial and stratigraphic contexts. However, archaeological research has demonstrated that lithic production strategies were organized through landscape-scale constraints including the availability of raw materials and the energetic costs of their transport. As such, the study of open-air Stone Age sites in the Cradle of Humankind can potentially offer insight into the relationships between raw material procurement and reduction processes in this region. Here, we present a case study from the open-air locality of Elandsdrift Farm, which preserves a palimpsest of Earlier and Middle Stone Age lithic materials. While the chronological and spatial contexts of this locality present significant interpretative challenges, the Elandsdrift Farm lithic materials are not without scientific value. A landscape archaeological approach is employed to explore the influence of raw material transport on tool-making. Trends in core reduction intensity and flaking efficiency suggest that landform ruggedness and distances traveled to procure raw materials significantly influenced lithic production strategies throughout the Early to Middle Pleistocene. Despite the contextual challenges presented by open-air localities, landscape archaeological methods can inform the economic aspects of lithic scatters in this region, which cannot be easily inferred from archaeological assemblages in cave contexts.

Journal

African Archaeological Review – Springer Journals

Published: May 15, 2019

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