Bead Production of the Later Stone Age in Northern Malawi

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Human Origins Migration and Evolution Research Consortium Poster Symposium" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Later Stone Age (LSA) bead production is typically reported with ostrich eggshell (OES) as the primary raw material. In south central Africa, land snail shell (LSS) was also used, but most sites have uncertain and poorly dated associations. The Malawi Ancient Lifeways and Peoples Project has now recovered both OES and LSS beads and preforms from securely dated LSA contexts at the Hora 1 and Mazinga 1 sites in the Mzimba District of northern Malawi. This shows that beads from both materials were made on site, as part of LSA technological behavior. However, both OES beads and unmodified OES are restricted to Pleistocene deposits. In the Holocene, LSS replaced OES as the sole raw material for bead production, and a directly dated preform from each site shows that this change took place at least by ~9500 cal BP. Bead production pathways also differ between the two time periods within the LSA, with pathway 1 (where blanks are first drilled and then shaped) dominating OES production and pathway 2 (where shaping precedes drilling) dominating LSS production. These results show how raw material availability and material properties influenced technical decision making at different times across the LSA.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Human Origins Migration and Evolution Research Consortium Poster Symposium

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32966