News

Secrets of Stone Age behaviour

Published 7 March 2013

The traditional image of Stone Age people having just primitive skills has been turned on its head by new research from the University of Brighton which suggests our ancient ancestors were capable of planning and organising the long-distance transport of raw materials for stone tool-making.

Research led by Professor David Nash, a geographer in the School of Environment and Technology, shows that Middle Stone Age people in the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa sourced a flint-like material called silcrete and transported it hundreds of kilometres before using it to make spearheads and other stone tools.

The research involved testing the chemistry of silcrete fragments excavated from White Paintings Shelter at Tsodilo Hills (a UNESCO World Heritage Site in northwest Botswana), one of the most important Middle Stone Age sites in central southern Africa.

Professor Nash and a team of archaeologists from the University of Oslo and geologists from Brighton and the Botswana National Museum, discovered that the silcrete, widely used for stone tool manufacture at White Paintings Shelter, was transported from surprisingly distant sources – up to 295 km away from Tsodilo Hills. Using age data reported by the original site excavators, the results indicate that early humans collected silcrete from the same areas for as long as 50,000 years.

Sigrid Staurset and Sheila Coulson examine surface archaeology at Lake Ngami, close to one of quarry sites used by Stone Age peoples.
(photograph © 2011 Trevor Thomas)

The discovery indicates that early humans in southern Africa had developed long-term planning capabilities by around 100,000 years ago. Such capabilities are essential for the establishment of exchange networks and trade that we take for granted today.

Professor Nash said the study introduces an approach which can now be used to explore a wide range of aspects of Stone Age behaviour: "Our geochemical fingerprinting results demonstrate that the people who used White Paintings Shelter during the Middle Stone Age were clearly aware of the available resources at Tsodilo Hills, anticipated a need, and procured silcrete from at least 220 km away for tool manufacture.

"This suggests that these people made two conscious decisions. First, despite having ready access to local quartz and quartzite at Tsodilo Hills they chose to import silcrete. Second, they opted to use silcrete from south of the Okavango Delta rather than silcrete of equal quality from sources much closer to home.

"The reason for them making these choices is, as yet, unresolved. This procurement strategy could be purely economic or may be related to territorial or symbolic factors. However, knowledge of the landscape, locations of silcrete quarries and movement routes between outcrops and White Paintings Shelter must have been communicated. It is difficult to imagine this communication being possible without facilities for in-depth planning and advanced language."

David Nash, Sigrid Staurset and Mosarwa Babutsi examine artefacts from White Paintings Shelter at the Botswana National Museum, Gaborone.
(photograph © 2011 Trevor Thomas)

This article is due to be published in the Journal of Human Evolution.