Rebound Hardness Results for the Raw Material In and Around Pinnacle Point, South Africa and the Implications Thereof

Summary

The Middle Stone Age lithic assemblage at the Pinnacle Point site (Western Cape, South Africa) fluctuates between local, coarse-grained material and exotic, fine-grained, heat treated material throughout the human occupation layers. By understanding raw material choice, the first step in the chaîne opératoire, we can better understand these shifts in raw material representation. Quantifying the mechanical characteristics associated with knapability and comparing these ranked benefits to the costs of acquisition allows us to describe and compare utilized lithologies in and between sites in a reproducible and subjective manner. The Schmidt Rebound Hammer has been used in previous studies to quantify rebound hardness as a proxy for knapability of various raw materials within the gathering range of a site. The purpose of this study was to rank the relevant lithologies according to their desirability, and identify acquisition choice patterns. The research focuses on the two most prevalent raw materials from Pinnacle Point, quartzite and silcrete. This presentation reports the rebound hardness results and the implications thereof, and discusses the role of the Schmidt Rebound Hammer.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Building the Hunter-gatherer’s Paleoscape on the South African Coast: the archaeological record   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage