From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Coastal-focused narratives have dominated our understanding of the behavioral diversity seen in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene archaeological records of southern African during the past 20 years. However, these narratives tend to overlook the persistent presence of hunter-gatherers in diverse landscapes in the interior regions of the continent. Recent fieldwork and research demonstrates the presence of hunter-gatherers in montane, desert, semi-desert, grassland, and riverine environments from at least the Late Pleistocene onward. This session will therefore bring together researchers working across the distinctive environments found within southern Africa to contribute toward a more cohesive understanding of hunter-gatherer landscape use in this region during the past 100,000 years. In this respect, rather than focusing on one biome as a source of innovation, this session will emphasize the presence of hunter-gatherers across southern Africa’s diverse environments, and the connections and interactions across these landscapes, as a means to better approach an understanding of the past in this region.

Other Keywords
Paleolithic • Lithic Analysis • Hunter-Gatherers/Foragers • Survey • Material Culture and Technology • Taphonomy and Site Formation • Geoarchaeology • Hunter-Gatherers • Cultural Transmission • Settlement patterns

Geographic Keywords
Republic of Botswana (Country) • Republic of Namibia (Country) • Republic of South Africa (Country) • Republic of Kenya (Country) • United Republic of Tanzania (Country) • Republic of Uganda (Country) • Gabonese Republic (Country) • Republic of the Congo (Country) • Democratic Republic of the Congo (Country) • Africa (Continent)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-12 of 12)

  • Documents (12)
Documents
  • Evolving Social Networks during the Late Pleistocene: An Interior Perspective from Grassridge Rockshelter, South Africa (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Collins. Ayanda Mdludlu. Jayne Wilkins. April Nowell. Christopher Ames.

    This is an abstract from the "From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Humans are social beings and being able to track social interactions and relationships across space and through time is a major focus of both anthropological and archaeological research. Within archaeology, the scale and intensity of social interactions has been...

  • Introducing "Project Piedemonte": Between the Maloti-Drakensberg and the Great Escarpment in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Paloma De La Peña. David M. Witelson.

    This is an abstract from the "From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This new project aims to map mobility patterns and social networks from prehistory to historical times in the western piedmont of the Maloti-Drakensberg, South Africa. It also considers the relationships between archaeological and rock art sites, and how rock art...

  • Investigating the Formation History of Surface Archaeology in the Doring River Valley, South Africa (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Natasha Phillips. Ian Moffat. Matthew Shaw. Chris Ames. Alex Mackay.

    This is an abstract from the "From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Southern Africa’s Late Pleistocene archaeology is pursued through the lens of rockshelter deposits. However, their spatial coverage is small and geographically biased, distorting our understanding of human behavioral evolution. To overcome this, researchers are...

  • Late Pleistocene Occupation in the Southern Kalahari: New Results from the North of Kuruman Palaeoarchaeology Project (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Schoville. Jayne Wilkins.

    This is an abstract from the "From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent investigations of the southern African Late Pleistocene archaeological record have transformed our understanding of the biocultural evolution of our species. Although the intensity of research on coastal and near-coastal records is greater than in the...

  • Life in the Margins: The Pre-Still Bay Deposits from Varsche Rivier 003, Southern Namaqualand, South Africa (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Teresa Steele. Alex Mackay. Mareike Stahlschmidt.

    This is an abstract from the "From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Varsche Rivier (VR) 003 is located in the Knersvlakte, the quartz-gravel plains of southern Namaqualand, South Africa. While currently a marginal, low-rainfall region within the Succulent Karoo Biome, conditions were more favorable during the Late Pleistocene....

  • On the Edge of the Kalahari: New Excavations of the Middle Stone Age Deposits at Olieboomspoort, South Africa (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Aurore Val. Paloma de la Peña. May Murungi. Frank Neumann. Dominic Stratford.

    This is an abstract from the "From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Olieboomspoort is one of the few rockshelters in South Africa documenting phases of use going back to the Acheulean and up until the very end of the Later Stone Age. Previous work has focused on the recent phases, consistent with traces left by the last...

  • A Regional Perspective on the Final MSA in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregor Bader. Lyn Wadley. Christian Sommer. Nicholas Conard.

    This is an abstract from the "From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The final MSA of southern Africa (~40–28ka) represents one of the most understudied technocomplexes in this part of the world. Researchers often focused on earlier time periods or those shortly after, encompassing the transition between Middle and Later Stone Age....

  • Stone Age Archaeology in the Lower Save River Valley, Southern Mozambique (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Haws. Nuno Bicho. João Cascalheira. Mussa Raja. Milena Carvalho.

    This is an abstract from the "From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Southern Mozambique, with extensive Quaternary-aged deposits, shows great potential to inform on early modern human behavior. Despite its geographic proximity to well-known southern African hotspots of Stone Age archaeology, southern Mozambique represents a major...

  • Technological Organization on the Paleo-Agulhas Plain: Robberg Lithic Technology from Knysna Eastern Heads Cave 1 (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Watson. Naomi Cleghorn.

    This is an abstract from the "From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lithic technological organization is based on the landscape-scale distribution and availability of resources. During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the landscape off the southern coast of South Africa was a different world than it is today. At its most extreme, the...

  • The Technological Sequence of Heuningneskrans (Limpopo, South Africa) around the Time of the Last Glacial Maximum (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Giulia Ricci. Aurore Val. Guillaume Porraz.

    This is an abstract from the "From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The southern African region comprises a mosaic of biomes influenced by various physical and atmospheric parameters. Pleistocene hunter-gatherer societies would have exploited those biomes differently, which would have contributed to generate different lithic...

  • That High Lonesome Sound: The MIS 5a (~80 ka) Middle Stone Age Lithic Assemblages from Melikane Rockshelter, Highland Lesotho (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Stewart. Kyra Pazan. Genevieve Dewar.

    This is an abstract from the "From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Multidisciplinary research suggests Marine Isotope Stage 5 (~130–74 ka) was an important evolutionary stage in African deep history. Population expansion and growth spurred changes in material culture and the exploration of previously unoccupied regions and...

  • Update on Research at the Site of Waterfall Bluff, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Erich Fisher. Stephan Winkler. Shara Bailer. Hayley Cawthra. Irene Esteban.

    This is an abstract from the "From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavations at Waterfall Bluff, South Africa, document evidence of occupation in a persistent coastal context from MIS3 to the Middle Holocene. Remains of marine mollusks and fish show for the first time that coastal foraging was a component of some hunter-gatherer...