cryptotephra (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugene Smith. Amber Ciravolo. Minghua Ren. Panagiotis Karkanas. Curtis Marean.

Cryptotephra was identified in a sediment stack at Pinnacle Point Site 5-6, South Africa, and occur as small glass shards (less than 100 µm in size). Shards are found in sediment from the Shelly Ashy Dark Brown Sand (SADBS) and the Ashy Light Brown Sand (ALBS) layers with weighted mean OSL dates of 70.6 ± 2.3 and 71.1 ± 2.3 ka respectively. The shards are intimately mixed with sediment and are rare. A preliminary shard distribution profile shows that shards are distributed continuously through...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugene Smith. Racheal Johnsen. Jayde Hirniak. Minghua Ren. Curtis Marean.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances and Debates in the Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Placing archaeological sites on the same timeline across the African continent is essential for determining the initial appearance of key human behaviors and cultural features. Analytical error associated with traditional dating techniques makes these determinations difficult. Cryptotephra, which are small (<80 micron)...