2023/11/07 by Lucy Timbrell, Behailu Habte, Yosef Tefera +7 · 12 citations
Arts and Humanities · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Social Sciences · #Archaeology #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Cave #Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Studies #Geography #Later Stone Age #Middle Stone Age #Pleistocene #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Stone Age #Stone tool #Structuring
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/0067270x.2023.2268986
published in Azania Archaeological Research in Africa 59(1), 111-139 (Routledge)
openalex publication_date 2023/11/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
Stone points are one of the key features used to define the African Middle Stone Age (MSA). Regional patterns in their shape and size through time have been thought to reflect inter-group interactions and networks of populations and are used to define cultural phases within the MSA. However, eastern Africa does not have distinctive and widely applied chrono-stratigraphic point variants that divide its MSA record, which is often described as being highly variable. This paper presents a metric and geometric morphometric analysis of eastern African MSA points and evaluates potential drivers of variation in them in relation to null models of isolation by distance, time and environment. Approximately half of the shape variance in our sample can be explained by spatial, temporal and environmental differences, as well as by size, indicating a degree of demographic continuity through sustained cultural transmission. A portion of the remaining variance likely represents stylistic differences between assemblages, which are often the subject of interest in archaeological studies. The highly variable nature of the eastern African MSA may reflect the region’s refugial positioning within the continent, with point technology a flexible adaptive system that was dynamically employed across Africa during the MSA depending on varying social and ecological contexts, resulting in the appearance of both ‘generic’ and ‘specific’ tool forms at particular times and places.