Two Rockshelters in the Namib: Land use, site use, and risk over the Middle to Later Stone Age transition in Southwestern Africa.

Summary

The shifts in land and site use strategies that occurred over the Middle to Later Stone Age (MSA to LSA) transition remain poorly understood across the full diversity of environments in Southern Africa. In the Central Namib Desert of Namibia, two rockshelters, Erb Tanks and Mirabib, provide insights into these dynamics within the context of a persistent arid to hyper-arid climate. Employing data from an ongoing lithic sourcing survey, we argue that groups equipped with MSA-type lithic technologies procured stone and occupied broadly similar ecological zones in the Namib Desert to their LSA counterparts thousands of years later. However, data from our test excavations and technological analyses suggest that MSA patterns of occupation of discrete, attractive points on the Namib landscape, such as prominent rockshelters, shifted markedly in the context of the LSA. We argue that shifts over time in rockshelter occupational intensity and foraging technological strategies differed as a result of environmentally-driven shifts in subsistence risks as well as possible changes in the Namib's population density.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• The Frison Institute/Geoarchaeology Interest Group Symposium: Archaeology and Geoarchaeology of Rockshelters and Caves

Keywords

Spatial Coverage