Technological Organization Strategies during the East African Late Stone Age: Blade Production and the Evolution of Standardized Technology

Summary

Ol Tepesi rockshelter (GsJi53) is located in Kenya’s central Rift Valley on the southern slope of Mt. Eburu, northwest of Lake Naivasha. Its 30-meter high rear wall and 45-meter wide floor would have provided prehistoric inhabitants with a vast habitable area. Excavated deposits span the most recent 17,000 years, from the Iron Age back to the late Pleistocene LSA. The base of the sequence was not reached and likely extends further back in time.

Almost 200,000 artifacts, including pottery, lithics, fauna, ostrich eggshell and ochre, were recovered during two seasons of excavation. A series of hearths with associated cut and burned bones were also exposed. A sample (n=3039) of flaked obsidian artifacts of a new Late Pleistocene LSA lithic industry was analyzed by typological classification and quantitative morpho-metrics. Backed microliths, burins, scrapers and expedient tools dominate the blade-based assemblage. Results of this analysis provide insight into techniques of systematic blade production and the development of standardized technology at the end of the last glacial maximum. This analysis contributes to our ultimate goal of investigating the evolution of modern human behavior by analysis of technological organization strategies during the Middle and Late Stone Ages in East Africa.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage