Technological Adaptations of Nubian cores in the Karoo: neW geometric morphometric Approaches

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Landscape-scale perspectives on Later Stone Age settlement in the Tankwa Karoo, South Africa

Publication . Hallinan, Emily

The Late Pleistocene and Holocene settlement record of southern Africa shows clear discontinuities both through time and across space. While there is considerable variability between different ecological biomes, the sub-continent's interior arid zones show particularly unstable occupation histories. However, understanding the nature of and reasons for these discontinuities is hampered by substantial spatial gaps in our archaeological knowledge. This paper presents evidence from the Tankwa Karoo region - intermediate between the well-studied Western Cape Cederberg Mountains and the interior Upper Karoo - to capture Later Stone Age (LSA) behaviour at the interface between Cape and Karoo environments. Off-site surveys recorded surface artefacts across a 100 km-long study area, documenting LSA settlement at a landscape scale and testing expected patterns against settlement records of regions to the west and east. The results indicate that in contrast to the strongly pulsed occupation evidence from the Cederberg Mountains and the Upper Karoo, no LSA phases show particularly high site densities or sustained use of longer-term sites. Additionally, the most arid parts of the eastern Tankwa Karoo show very limited LSA evidence. This suggests that this marginal environment was occupied only ephemerally during the LSA, potentially serving as a corridor between more reliably resourced regions.

2023Journal article

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

Publication . Hallinan, Emily

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.

2021Journal article

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Nubian Levallois reduction strategies in the Tankwa Karoo, South Africa

Publication . Hallinan, Emily; Shaw, Matthew

The Middle Stone Age record in southern Africa is recognising increasing diversity in lithic technologies as research expands beyond the coastal-montane zone. New research in the arid Tankwa Karoo region of the South African interior has revealed a rich surface artefact record including a novel method of point production, recognised as Nubian Levallois technology in Late Pleistocene North Africa, Arabia and the Levant. We analyse 121 Nubian cores and associated points from the surface site Tweefontein against the strict criteria which are used to define Nubian technology elsewhere. The co-occurrence of typically post-Howiesons Poort unifacial points suggests an MIS 3 age. We propose that the occurrence of this distinctive technology at numerous localities in the Tankwa Karoo region reflects an environment-specific adaptation in line with technological regionalisation seen more widely in MIS 3. The arid setting of these assemblages in the Tankwa Karoo compares with the desert context of Nubian technology globally, consistent with convergent evolution in our case. The South African evidence contributes an alternative perspective on Nubian technology removed from the 'dispersal' or 'diffusion' scenarios of the debate surrounding its origin and spread within and out of Africa.

2020Journal article

Open Access

The nature of Nubian: developing current global perspectives on Nubian Levallois technology and the Nubian complex

Publication . Hallinan, Emily; Barzilai, Omry; Beshkani, Amir; Cascalheira, João; Demidenko, Yuri E.; Goder‐Goldberger, Mae; Hilbert, Yamandú H.; Hovers, Erella; Marks, Anthony E.; Nymark, Andreas; Olszewski, Deborah I.; Oron, Maya; Rose, Jeffrey I.; Shaw, Matthew; Usik, Vitaly I.

Nubian Levallois technology has recently risen to the forefront ofdebates surrounding Late Pleistocene human technological behavior,cultural traditions, and demographic histories. Named after the regionwhere it was first identified, Nubian Levallois describes a specificmethod of lithic point production that occurs in Middle Palaeolithic (or Middle Stone Age) assemblages across arid North Africa, the Levant and Arabia.1–9However, the recent identification of Nubian technology in separate, disconnected regions, such as SouthAfrica10–12and possibly India13,14suggests there are more diversescenarios of its emergence and spread than the original model of abroad Nubian technocomplex related to a single, expandingpopulation from its north‐east African heartland.3While fewassemblages containing Nubian technology are directly dated, itsproposed MIS 5 timing coincides with early modern human dispersalsout of Africa, adding a further dimension of whether certain lithictechnologies can be linked to specific geographic populations.

2022Journal article

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