Comparing Northern and Southern African Coastal Adaptations Through Faunal Remains

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Early human adaptation on the African coasts: Comparing northwest Morocco and the Cape of South Africa" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Decades of zooarchaeological research on faunas from coastal sites along the Cape of South Africa have documented human subsistence patterns during the Pleistocene Middle Stone Age (MSA) and the subsequent Terminal Pleistocene and Holocene Later Stone Age (LSA). MSA humans regularly hunted all sizes of bovids and equids. Fur seals, penguins, tortoises, and ostrich eggs were also commonly consumed, but most notable is the high abundance of mollusks such as limpets and mussels. Despite their reliance on coastal resources, MSA people did not regularly accumulate smaller resources such as small mollusks, fish, or rock lobsters. Arguments have been made about the importance of these coastal resources for human evolution, but until recently, very few samples from other coasts were documented. Over the past 20 years renewed excavations in northwestern Morocco have provided opportunities for comparison. Here people also consistently hunted a range of bovids and equids, and they regularly consumed limpets and mussels, while infrequently taking smaller resources. In both regions, humans adapted to changing environments, and ecological differences shaped variation between southern and northern African subsistence. We lack early LSA assemblages in both regions, which limits full characterization of diachronic trends in human ecology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Early human adaptation on the African coasts: Comparing northwest Morocco and the Cape of South Africa

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50710