Late Pleistocene Occupation in the Southern Kalahari: New Results from the North of Kuruman Palaeoarchaeology Project

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.

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 interior, new fieldwork is beginning to balance this research disparity. Here we report the recent excavations and survey work that has identified Earlier, Middle, and Later Stone Age occupation in the southern Kalahari Basin. Through excavations focused on the stratified deposits at Ga-Mohana Hill North Rockshelter, the evidence for symbolic behaviors suggests adaptive complexity on par with the coastal record. Coupled with surface lithic scatter evidence from our survey work in the Tswalu Kalahari Reserve provides insights into how water availability structured foraging activity in this semiarid landscape. Identifying behavioral variability in the southern Kalahari provides an important opportunity to investigate early human adaptability, a key component for the subsequent dispersal of humans into arid and semiarid regions around the world.

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): 33085