Still Bay and Howiesons Poort Foraging Strategies: Recent Research and Models of Culture Change

The Still Bay (SB) and Howiesons Poort (HP) industries, endemic to southern Africa and dating to approximately 72–59 ka, have received a great deal of archaeological attention by virtue of their striking patterns of technology and their close association with some of the earliest unambiguously symbolic objects found in southern Africa. This paper reviews recent literature concerning SB and HP lithic assemblages, faunal remains, paleoenvironmental contexts, and chronological information. It argues that SB biface-dominated technology was designed to be multifunctional and to economize lithic raw material, a strategy well-suited to foragers moving frequently across a wide range of ecological zones in which access to resources and prey encounters were unpredictable. In contrast, HP blade-based tools, using backed blades as modular components in compound weapons, were efficient and reliable hunting weapons designed for specific tasks. More costly and difficult to maintain, HP technology resulted from the targeting of known, localized, and seasonal resources through planned logistical forays. We argue that these complicated patterns of innovation represent separate cultural responses to environmental instability during Marine Isotope Stage 4 and demographic pressures in southern Africa at this time. Against the backdrop of environmental and demographic shifts, the emergence of these innovative tools and associated symbolic objects reflects distinct but quintessentially modern cultural behaviors ethnographically associated with risk reduction, reciprocity, and information sharing.     

Ethnoarchaeology and the Organization of Lithic Technology

Although the modern production and use of stone tools is rare, ethnoarchaeological research on this subject has provided important perspectives on methodological approaches to archaeological lithic analysis. Recent ethnoarchaeological research on lithics frequently takes the form of “cautionary tales,” warning against the primacy of functional variables most commonly invoked by lithic analysts. I argue that lithic ethnoarchaeology would benefit from a comparative organizational framework for explaining variation in patterns of stone tool use that takes into account the predictability and redundancy of the location and timing of technological activities. Understanding the underlying causes of modern patterns of stone tool use, in turn, offers a framework for exploring sources of lithic technological variation in the archaeological record. I also argue that technological analytical perspectives, such as the cha?ne opératoire and sequence of reduction approaches, can benefit from the insights gained through lithic ethnoarchaeological research, helping us define important analytical concepts and identify appropriate units of analysis.