Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Lithic Minimalization And Ecological Risk

Suny At Stony Brook, Stony Brook NY

Investigators

Abstract

This project evaluates the role of climatic variability in the evolution of small tool technologies. Small tool technologies are a novel and cyclical feature in Homo sapiens societies. Nanotechnologies such as have revolutionized biomedical sciences, engineering and computer systems are now considered hallmarks of the "digital age." Yet, the practice of producing small tools emerged in African and Eurasia over 100 000 years ago. These tools are known as microliths. Archaeologists link microliths to such distinctive human behaviors as the production of composite tools (e.g. projectile weapons), the construction of ecological niches, extensive social networking, and global human dispersals. Anthropologists have long recognized a link between microlithic technologies and ecological risk, or the frequency and severity of economic loss due to insufficient recovery of energy from their environment. Long-term comparative research on processes of toolkit microlithization as a response to ecological risk is hampered by variable definitions for microliths; uncertainty about how microliths were made; and a lack of data on how microlith production methods were culturally transmitted. This project will use a comparative technological approach to the rich southern African MIS 2 (c. 29 - 12 ka) archaeological record to address these obstacles. First, it will establish statistical guidelines for defining microliths to overcome their variable definitions. Second, it will obtain detailed technological information from experiments on siliceous rocks and quartz minerals to compare two primary microlith production strategies: bipolar and freehand reduction. Third, it will track evidence for the cultural transmission of these production strategies using attributes of core modification and flake morphology to indicate lithic process vs. product copying. Technological data will be combined with modern climatic, paleoenvironmental and spatial data to assess the role of ecological risk in the uptake and spread of microlithic technologies in southern Africa. These relationship will be assessed on stone tools at three southern African rockshelters: Sehonghong, Ntloana T'oana and Boomplaas. The southern African MIS 2 archaeological record is uniquely positioned to offer insights into the operation of analogous microlithic technological systems in other areas of the world, and thus human behavioral evolution more broadly. Rapid climate change is a concern shared by all of humanity past and present. Although the role of climate change in our future is yet to be determined, how our late Pleistocene ancestors dealt with climate change is a story written in stone. Our future survival depends on understanding this story.