University of Toronto

Graduate Student, Anthropology

Thesis Title: Technological behaviors represented by the 500,000 year old Fauresmith assemblage from Kathu Pan, South Africa.

About

Research Interests: African Earlier and Middle Stone Age, modern human origins, Levallois technology, lithic analysis, technological style, cognitive and behavioural evolution, hunter-gatherer archaeology

My dissertation research seeks to identify aspects of hominin technological behaviors represented by the lithic assemblage of the Kathu Pan 1 (KP1) archaeological site in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa. This assemblage is in a unique position to advance modern human origins research because it permits an assessment of hominin cognitive and social capacities near the onset of the African Middle Stone Age (MSA).

Specifically, my research focus is on three primary question areas regarding hominin behavior represented by the KP1 Stratum 4a lithic assemblage. Stratum 4a has been dated to 500 ka (Porat et al. 2010).

(1) What lithic reduction strategies were employed by Fauresmith hominins at KP1 and how does blade production compare to that observed at other Middle and Upper Pleistocene sites? What are the cognitive implications of blade production in the MSA? To address these questions, I am conducting a chaîne opératoire analysis of the KP1 Fauresmith assemblage.

(2) How are lithic raw materials distributed across the Kathu Pan landscape and how did geographic variability affect how Middle Pleistocene hominids exploited raw materials for lithic reduction? What effect did raw material quality, distribution, and abundance have on the knapping choices of the KP1 hominins? Geological survey, experimental knapping studies, and petrographic analyses of available raw materials and lithic artifacts from KP1 will help address these questions.

(3) Were unifacially worked points at KP1 used as spear tips? What does this tell us about hunting adaptations and hafted tool technology during the Fauresmith? Methods of analysis include morphometrics for comparison with other archaeological and ethnographic spear tips, macrofracture analysis, and image-based distribution analysis of edge damage using GIS software. If a functional analysis of the KP1 points demonstrates that they served as thrusting spear tips, it would provide some of the earliest evidence for lithic-tipped spear technology.

Reference cited:
Porat, Naomi, Michael Chazan, Rainer Grün, Maxime Aubert, Vera Eisenmann, and Liora Kolska Horwitz. 2010. New radiometric ages for the Fauresmith industry from Kathu Pan, southern Africa: Implications for the Earlier to Middle Stone Age transition. Journal of Archaeological Science 37, no. 2: 269-283.

Contact Information