Evolving Social Networks during the Late Pleistocene: An Interior Perspective from Grassridge Rockshelter, South Africa

Summary

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 related to the pace of cultural and technological innovations, which in turn produces a major influence on mobility, material culture, and a multitude of other cultural facets in past societies. This paper will present data from the lithic and personal ornament (marine and ostrich eggshell bead) assemblages recovered from the Late Pleistocene archaeological record (~45,000–11,600 years ago) at Grassridge Rockshelter, Eastern Cape, to provide an interior grasslands perspective on the archaeology of this region during these time. Further, the data from Grassridge will be compared with other well-described sites in the broader area to discuss the extent or absence of social networks at a regional scale.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32046