title: Climate, Environment and Early Human Innovation: Stable Isotope and Faunal Proxy Evidence from Archaeological Sites (98-59ka) in the Southern Cape, South Africa.
abstract: The Middle Stone Age (MSA) of southern Africa, and in particular its Still Bay and Howiesons Poort lithic traditions, represents a period of dramatic subsistence, cultural, and technological innovation by our species, Homo sapiens. Climate change has frequently been postulated as a primary driver of the appearance of these innovative behaviours, with researchers invoking either climate instability as a reason for the development of buffering mechanisms, or environmentally stable refugia as providing a stable setting for experimentation. Testing these alternative models has proved intractable, however, as existing regional palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental records remain spatially, stratigraphically, and chronologically disconnected from the archaeological record. Here we report high-resolution records of environmental shifts based on stable carbon and oxygen isotopes in ostrich eggshell (OES) fragments, faunal remains, and shellfish assemblages excavated from two key MSA archaeological sequences, Blombos Cave and Klipdrift Shelter. We compare these records with archaeological material remains in the same strata. The results from both sites, spanning the periods 98-73 ka and 72-59 ka, respectively, show significant changes in vegetation, aridity, rainfall seasonality, and sea temperature in the vicinity of the sites during periods of human occupation. While these changes clearly influenced human subsistence strategies, we find that the remarkable cultural and technological innovations seen in the sites cannot be linked directly to climate shifts. Our results demonstrate the need for scale-appropriate, on-site testing of behavioural-environmental links, rather than broader, regional comparisons.
authors.affiliation: School of Archaeology, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, the University of Oxford, Dyson Perrins Building, South Parks Road, Oxford, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Roberts
authors.affiliation: Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.|Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
authors.forename: Christopher S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Henshilwood
authors.affiliation: Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.|Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
authors.forename: Karen L
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: van Niekerk
authors.affiliation: Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
authors.forename: Petro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Keene
authors.affiliation: Division of Geographic, Archaeological and Environmental Sciences, University of Bradford, Bradford, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gledhill
authors.affiliation: Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.|School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
authors.forename: Jerome
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Reynard
authors.affiliation: Archaeozoology and Large Mammal Section, Ditsong National Museum of Natural History (former Transvaal Museum), Paul Kruger St, Pretoria, South Africa.|Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of South Africa, UNISA, Durban, South Africa.
authors.forename: Shaw
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Badenhorst
authors.affiliation: School of Archaeology, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, the University of Oxford, Dyson Perrins Building, South Parks Road, Oxford, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lee-Thorp
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001106:Archaeology; D002244:Carbon / Q000737:chemistry; D059552:Caves; D057231:Climate Change; D004528:Egg Shell / Q000737:chemistry*; D004777:Environment; D005580:Fossils; D005843:Geography; D006802:Human Activities; D006801:Humans; D010100:Oxygen / Q000737:chemistry; D010163:Paleontology; D013019:South Africa; D020310:Struthioniformes
chemical_list: D002244:Carbon; D010100:Oxygen