Beyond the rockshelter: uncovering the lost landscapes of the Middle Stone Age
In short: While much of our understanding of early human behavior comes from caves, new research suggests the true story of the Middle Stone Age lies in the open air. This presentation explores how archaeologists are mapping the Doring River valley to reconstruct a larger prehistoric world.
The emergence of modern human behavior—marked by symbolic art, shell beads, and complex technology—is a central mystery in paleoanthropology. While much research focuses on South African rockshelver sites, the Doring River Paleo Landscape Project seeks to look beyond these sheltered spaces. Launched in the summer of 2014, the project investigates surface archaeology within the eastern Cederberg region of South Africa.
By documenting MSA artifacts found in open-air contexts, researchers aim to correlate these surface finds with known rockshelter deposits. This approach allows for a unified, landscape-scale analysis of the Middle Stone Age, a period spanning approximately 250,000 to 40,000 years ago.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Douglas G. Lovell, Jr. "Reports from the Field": Middle Stone Age surface Archaeology
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