By: Gerrit Dusseldorp

 

Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University & Palaeo-Research Institute, University of Johannesburg

 

A few years after our excavations at Umhlatuzana rockshelter, we can now give an overview of the results. This storeroom talk will be a show and tell of some of the typologically characteristic artefacts illustrating the changes in stone tools through time.

 

The Howiesons Poort period of the Middle Stone Age (65-60 thousand years ago) is characterized by rounded segments that have been suggested to represent the world’s oldest arrowheads. To understand their functioning, we have conducted some arrow-shooting experiments with replicas and these have led to a better understanding of the likely way in which the segments were hafted.

 

Towards the late Middle Stone Age, the technology changes, segments are rare, but there are many retouched tools, such as points and scrapers. More important is that Umhlatuzana shows a transition to the Later Stone Age (between 40 and 20 thousand years ago), which is represented at only a few sites. Our analysis shows that the change in technology coincides with a change in raw material use. In the Later Stone Age, quartz becomes much more important then previously and it is worked differently. I illustrate some of this by way of experiments that we have conducted on the knapping of LSA quartz artefacts.

 

This is a bonus event to the normal Arch Soc schedule.

 

Please contact Ghilraen Laue (glaue@nmsa.org.za) if you would like to attend.