Wind(ow) of change: The end of the Middle Stone Age and the beginning of the Later Stone Age at Umhlatuzana rockshelter showcasing concurrent technological and techno-economic shifts.
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Schmid, V.C., Sifogeorgaki, I., Abruzzese, T., Blik, S., Huang, L., Dusseldorp, G.L., 2026. Wind(ow) of change: The end of the Middle Stone Age and the beginning of the Later Stone Age at Umhlatuzana rockshelter showcasing concurrent technological and techno-economic shifts. Quaternary Science Reviews 377, 109806.
Abstract
The site of Umhlatuzana rockshelter contains a key sequence documenting developments in human behaviour from ∼70 ka throughout the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. Re-excavation of the site yielded high-resolution lithic assemblages that clarify the character of the end of the Middle Stone Age and the beginning of the Later Stone Age at the site. We performed a technological analysis of this lithic material across the transition from Middle to Later Stone Age. We show that this transition took place more rapidly than previously assumed. The change from the Middle to Later Stone Age is characterized by concomitant shifts in raw material provisioning, reduction strategies and tool corpus. The final Middle Stone Age features high investment in tool production, including careful shaping of bifacial pieces in hornfels, while the transition to the Later Stone Age stands out by the accelerated increase in bipolar reduction of mainly quartz and very low numbers of retouched elements. We further demonstrate the presence of an earlier Later Stone Age assemblage characterized by bladelet production using freehand percussion combined with various bipolar knapping strategies. We document a new type of assemblage between the earlier Later Stone Age and the Robberg that features Later Stone Age characteristics associated with a distinct blade production and tool types reminiscent of the Middle Stone Age. Comparison of the sequence with other sites on the subcontinent reveals that the transition from the Middle to Later Stone Age is a spatially and temporally diffuse process, which is best interpreted as the result of loose social connections and arrhythmic pace of local innovations bounded by among others raw material properties, cross-craft constraints and land-use strategies that led to a stable suite of similar solutions.