New insights into the eastern African Middle Stone Age: Ecology, Demography, and Material Culture
Eastern Africa maintains a key position in debates surrounding the emergence of Homo sapiens across Africa. Extensive research in the region has revealed a rich fossil record in association with a ‘generic’ but variable Middle Stone Age (MSA) material culture, providing an important laboratory for testing hypotheses about the behavioural evolution of our species. For example, multiple archaeological studies of the eastern African MSA note a link between the distribution and density of sites, archaeological diversity and environmental conditions, with ecology and demography often cited as key drivers of cultural evolution. This talk will review the archaeological and climatic records Middle-Late Pleistocene eastern Africa and discusses their implications for understanding the evolution of Homo sapiens. Drawing upon my own research, I will discuss the potential of the region as a refugial zone within Pleistocene Africa, likely providing consistently suitable conditions for survival that were characterised by high biodiversity, allowing population persistence as well as material culture diversification. I will also explore the interplay between evolutionary processes that may have resulted in the complex patterns observed throughout the African MSA record, including the appearance of ‘specific’ innovations against a backdrop of more ‘generic’ MSA elements.
Speaker
- Dr Lucy Timbrell (University of Liverpool and Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology)