Anthropology Brown Bag | Dr. Britt Bousman

Anthropology Brown Bag Lecture Series

Archaeological investigations coupled with paleontological, geological and paleoenvironmental research in the Modder River Valley are providing new data on the context of human occupations and adaptations over the last 120,000 years in the interior of South Africa. These patterns contrast with the much better studied evidence from the coastal regions. Detailed multi-scaled geological investigations using an allostratigraphic approach have resulted in the recognition of four Middle to Late Quaternary alluvial terraces spanning the last 250,000 years. Preserved in these terraces is a remarkable record of Later and Middle Stone Age human occupations and paleoenvironmental change including the evolution and development of the bovid and equid populations. The local evolution of the black wildebeest (Connnochaetes gnou), the giant cape zebra (Equus capensis) and giant Wildebeest (Megalotragus priscus) is significant as these species were especially important Middle Stone Age hunter-gatherers. Periods of severe drought appear to have resulted in the regional collapse of bovid and equid populations and abandonment by humans. When environmental conditions improved herd animals, followed by humans, moved back into the area. Also responding to these dramatic fluctuations in bovid and equid populations Middle Stone Age hunter-gatherers developed new weapon systems and subtle changes in their technological strategies to help them adapt to these dramatic changes. The details of population movements of both herd animals and humans between the coast and interior it still being deciphered in terms of donor and recipient populations. This is important to the human story because this is Southern Africa where some of the earliest populations of Homo sapiens sapiens evolved and modern human cognition seems to have emerged.