The African Middle Stone Age (MSA, typical range~320-30 ka) has been the subject of intense resea... more The African Middle Stone Age (MSA, typical range~320-30 ka) has been the subject of intense research interest in recent decades as a culture-chronological Unit associated with the emergence and dispersal of our species. Recent results of this work have shown that sites designated as "MSA" contain common approaches to lithic reduction, but that within this rubric, there is much diversity in overall assemblage characteristics and the timing of their appearance across the continent. As researchers recover more data from more sites, especially from undersampled geographic regions, this more complex picture of the MSA reveals technological and other behavioral diversity in early modern human populations that may inform about the ultimate success of our species. Here we add to this growing database by describing the environmental context and characteristics of two concentrations of stone artifacts from the late MSA (~43-21 ka) open-air locality of Chaminade-I (CHA-I), near the town of Karonga in northern Malawi. The CHA-I lithic artifacts show a flexible approach to stone tool production and use that is common to assemblages in Karonga but distinctive from MSA sites reported elsewhere. Radial and minimally reduced cores typify an unelaborated lithic assemblage, in which raw material choice is driven by toolstone clast size and shape rather than preferential use or treatment of specific materials, as found in MSA assemblages in the East African Rift, South Africa, and the North African coast. Lithic reduction at CHA-I took place within a woody, riparian context embedded within a more open woodland landscape. Most artifacts occurred in near-channel sandy deposits dated to~41 ka, and were buried under alluvial fan deposits that began aggrading by at least~21 ka and continued beyond~5.5 ka within a grassy, open landscape. The site's late MSA age and lack of elaboration in lithic technology challenges straightforward ideas of increasing complexity in human technological behavior over time and provides important insight into the diversity of MSA technologies and the environmental conditions in which they existed.
The Southern Montane Forest-Grassland mosaic ecosystem in the humid subtropics southern Rift Vall... more The Southern Montane Forest-Grassland mosaic ecosystem in the humid subtropics southern Rift Valley of Africa comprised the environmental context for a large area in which modern human evolution and dispersal occurred. Variable climatic conditions during the Late Pleistocene have ranged between humid and hyperarid, changing the character of the ecosystem and transforming it at different points in time into a barrier, a refuge, and a corridor between southern and eastern African populations. Alluvial fans presently blanket the areas adjacent to major river systems, which were key areas of prehistoric human habitation. These sets of variables have created conditions that are both challenging and advantageous to conduct archaeological research. Lateritic soil development has resulted in poor organic preservation and facilitated insect bioturbation, which has demanded an integrated micro-macro scale approach to building a reliable geochronology. An integrated field and analytical methodology has also been employed to identify the nature and degree of post-depositional movement in alluvial deposits, which preserve a wide range of spatial integrity levels in buried stone artifact assemblages between 47 and 30 ka in Karonga, northern Malawi. This paper describes the methodological advances taken toward understanding open-air Middle Stone Age archaeology in subtropical Africa, and explores the inferential potential for understanding Pleistocene human ecology in the important southern Rift Valley region.
... KATUNGA Menno Welling ... efforts. It is therefore not surprising the ALC chose to establish ... more ... KATUNGA Menno Welling ... efforts. It is therefore not surprising the ALC chose to establish its east bank station close to Katunga court.2 The chief could assist in the provision of security, food supplies and most importantly porters. ...
a b s t r a c t J. Desmond Clark and his colleagues were first to investigate the rich Middle Sto... more a b s t r a c t J. Desmond Clark and his colleagues were first to investigate the rich Middle Stone Age (MSA e from ca. 285 to 30,000 years ago) deposits in the Karonga District of northern Malawi in the 1960s. This work demonstrated the enormous potential of the area to inform about Middle to Late Pleistocene hominin lifeways, but further studies were hindered by difficulties in dating the sites and understanding their fine-scale depositional and paleoenvironmental contexts. With the advances that have been made in the fields of geoarchaeology, lithic analysis, palaeoenvironments, and geochronology over the last fifty years, the time is ideal to renew these investigations. Recent survey and excavation in Karonga, Malawi show that MSA lithic artifacts are preserved in a variety of stratified sedimentary contexts and that they exhibit limited weathering or other indications of post-depositional transport. These deposits are in close proximity to the high-resolution paleoenvironmental records derived from sediments at the bottom of nearby Lake Malawi, which provide context for the human behavior recorded by the artifacts. Results of excavations at one of these stratified sites e the Airport Site e are detailed here. This provides a renewed example of the site formation and behavioral data available in the region.
Thompson, Jessica C., Wright, David K., Mackay, Alex, Welling, Menno, Forman, Steven L., Price, G... more Thompson, Jessica C., Wright, David K., Mackay, Alex, Welling, Menno, Forman, Steven L., Price, Gilbert, Zhao, Jian-xin and Gomani-Chindebvu, Elizabeth (2012). Reassessment of the formation and significance of the Mwanganda's Village 'elephant butchery site', Karonga District, northern Malawi. In: , Abstracts of the Paleoanthropology Society 2012 Meeting. Paleoanthropology Society Meeting, Memphis, TN United States, (A35-A35). 17-18 April 2012.
The site of Mwanganda's Village, located along a paleochannel in northern Malawi, is one of only ... more The site of Mwanganda's Village, located along a paleochannel in northern Malawi, is one of only a few sites that have characterized the Middle Stone Age (MSA) of Malawi for decades (Clark & Haynes, 1970; Clark et al., 1970; Kaufulu, 1990). The Malawi Earlier-Middle Stone Age Project has re-examined the site using new mapping and chronometric tools in order to reinterpret the site's significance within the context of current debates surrounding human origins and the potential role the environment played in shaping human behavior. The new data do not support the previous hypothesis that the site was an elephant butchery location (contra Clark & Haynes, 1970; Clark et al., 1970; Kaufulu, 1990). Instead, the evidence shows successive colonization of riparian corridors by MSA hunter-gatherers focused on exploiting localized resources during periods of generally humid climates while other lakes desiccated across Africa. We challenge the hypothesis that stable and intermediately high lake levels within the African Rift Valley System (sensu Trauth et al., 2010) catalyzed the evolution of regional interaction networks between 42 and 22 ka. Instead, we interpret the evidence to suggest that regional variants of technology persist into the late MSA as foragers focused on exploiting resources from local catchments.
The African Middle Stone Age (MSA, typical range~320-30 ka) has been the subject of intense resea... more The African Middle Stone Age (MSA, typical range~320-30 ka) has been the subject of intense research interest in recent decades as a culture-chronological Unit associated with the emergence and dispersal of our species. Recent results of this work have shown that sites designated as "MSA" contain common approaches to lithic reduction, but that within this rubric, there is much diversity in overall assemblage characteristics and the timing of their appearance across the continent. As researchers recover more data from more sites, especially from undersampled geographic regions, this more complex picture of the MSA reveals technological and other behavioral diversity in early modern human populations that may inform about the ultimate success of our species. Here we add to this growing database by describing the environmental context and characteristics of two concentrations of stone artifacts from the late MSA (~43-21 ka) open-air locality of Chaminade-I (CHA-I), near the town of Karonga in northern Malawi. The CHA-I lithic artifacts show a flexible approach to stone tool production and use that is common to assemblages in Karonga but distinctive from MSA sites reported elsewhere. Radial and minimally reduced cores typify an unelaborated lithic assemblage, in which raw material choice is driven by toolstone clast size and shape rather than preferential use or treatment of specific materials, as found in MSA assemblages in the East African Rift, South Africa, and the North African coast. Lithic reduction at CHA-I took place within a woody, riparian context embedded within a more open woodland landscape. Most artifacts occurred in near-channel sandy deposits dated to~41 ka, and were buried under alluvial fan deposits that began aggrading by at least~21 ka and continued beyond~5.5 ka within a grassy, open landscape. The site's late MSA age and lack of elaboration in lithic technology challenges straightforward ideas of increasing complexity in human technological behavior over time and provides important insight into the diversity of MSA technologies and the environmental conditions in which they existed.
The Southern Montane Forest-Grassland mosaic ecosystem in the humid subtropics southern Rift Vall... more The Southern Montane Forest-Grassland mosaic ecosystem in the humid subtropics southern Rift Valley of Africa comprised the environmental context for a large area in which modern human evolution and dispersal occurred. Variable climatic conditions during the Late Pleistocene have ranged between humid and hyperarid, changing the character of the ecosystem and transforming it at different points in time into a barrier, a refuge, and a corridor between southern and eastern African populations. Alluvial fans presently blanket the areas adjacent to major river systems, which were key areas of prehistoric human habitation. These sets of variables have created conditions that are both challenging and advantageous to conduct archaeological research. Lateritic soil development has resulted in poor organic preservation and facilitated insect bioturbation, which has demanded an integrated micro-macro scale approach to building a reliable geochronology. An integrated field and analytical methodology has also been employed to identify the nature and degree of post-depositional movement in alluvial deposits, which preserve a wide range of spatial integrity levels in buried stone artifact assemblages between 47 and 30 ka in Karonga, northern Malawi. This paper describes the methodological advances taken toward understanding open-air Middle Stone Age archaeology in subtropical Africa, and explores the inferential potential for understanding Pleistocene human ecology in the important southern Rift Valley region.
... KATUNGA Menno Welling ... efforts. It is therefore not surprising the ALC chose to establish ... more ... KATUNGA Menno Welling ... efforts. It is therefore not surprising the ALC chose to establish its east bank station close to Katunga court.2 The chief could assist in the provision of security, food supplies and most importantly porters. ...
a b s t r a c t J. Desmond Clark and his colleagues were first to investigate the rich Middle Sto... more a b s t r a c t J. Desmond Clark and his colleagues were first to investigate the rich Middle Stone Age (MSA e from ca. 285 to 30,000 years ago) deposits in the Karonga District of northern Malawi in the 1960s. This work demonstrated the enormous potential of the area to inform about Middle to Late Pleistocene hominin lifeways, but further studies were hindered by difficulties in dating the sites and understanding their fine-scale depositional and paleoenvironmental contexts. With the advances that have been made in the fields of geoarchaeology, lithic analysis, palaeoenvironments, and geochronology over the last fifty years, the time is ideal to renew these investigations. Recent survey and excavation in Karonga, Malawi show that MSA lithic artifacts are preserved in a variety of stratified sedimentary contexts and that they exhibit limited weathering or other indications of post-depositional transport. These deposits are in close proximity to the high-resolution paleoenvironmental records derived from sediments at the bottom of nearby Lake Malawi, which provide context for the human behavior recorded by the artifacts. Results of excavations at one of these stratified sites e the Airport Site e are detailed here. This provides a renewed example of the site formation and behavioral data available in the region.
Thompson, Jessica C., Wright, David K., Mackay, Alex, Welling, Menno, Forman, Steven L., Price, G... more Thompson, Jessica C., Wright, David K., Mackay, Alex, Welling, Menno, Forman, Steven L., Price, Gilbert, Zhao, Jian-xin and Gomani-Chindebvu, Elizabeth (2012). Reassessment of the formation and significance of the Mwanganda's Village 'elephant butchery site', Karonga District, northern Malawi. In: , Abstracts of the Paleoanthropology Society 2012 Meeting. Paleoanthropology Society Meeting, Memphis, TN United States, (A35-A35). 17-18 April 2012.
The site of Mwanganda's Village, located along a paleochannel in northern Malawi, is one of only ... more The site of Mwanganda's Village, located along a paleochannel in northern Malawi, is one of only a few sites that have characterized the Middle Stone Age (MSA) of Malawi for decades (Clark & Haynes, 1970; Clark et al., 1970; Kaufulu, 1990). The Malawi Earlier-Middle Stone Age Project has re-examined the site using new mapping and chronometric tools in order to reinterpret the site's significance within the context of current debates surrounding human origins and the potential role the environment played in shaping human behavior. The new data do not support the previous hypothesis that the site was an elephant butchery location (contra Clark & Haynes, 1970; Clark et al., 1970; Kaufulu, 1990). Instead, the evidence shows successive colonization of riparian corridors by MSA hunter-gatherers focused on exploiting localized resources during periods of generally humid climates while other lakes desiccated across Africa. We challenge the hypothesis that stable and intermediately high lake levels within the African Rift Valley System (sensu Trauth et al., 2010) catalyzed the evolution of regional interaction networks between 42 and 22 ka. Instead, we interpret the evidence to suggest that regional variants of technology persist into the late MSA as foragers focused on exploiting resources from local catchments.
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