Stone tools, or lithics, are the least familiar artifacts archaeologists encounter in our research. Most of us have more than a passing acquaintance with artifacts made of ceramics or metal. We have household words for them, such as “bowl” or “nail,” that transfer readily into archaeological analysis. Few students come to archaeology already familiar with stone tools. When and where preservatio...

During the Nubia Salvage Campaign and the subsequent expeditions from the 1960's to the 1980's, numerous sites attributed to the Late Palaeolithic (~25-15 ka) were found in the Nile Valley, particularly in Nubia and Upper Egypt. This region is one of the few to have allowed human occupations during the dry Marine Isotope Stage 2 and is therefore key to understanding how human populations adapte...

The detailed technological analysis of the youngest Howiesons Poort occupation in Sibudu Cave, layer Grey Rocky, has shown the importance of blade production (with different knapping methods involved), but also of flaking methods in coarse grained rock types. Moreover, new strategies of bifacial production and microlithism were important. Grey Rocky lithic technology shows a really versatile ex...

In an important early attempt to apply behavioral ecological modeling to lithic resource use and the archaeological record, Ambrose and Lorenz (1990) investigated the problem of the Howiesons Poort sub-stage (HP) in the southern African Middle Stone Age (MSA). In that paper, Ambrose and Lorenz compared general mobility patterns (based on lithic raw material occurrences) to the general environme...

11 The Orapa Diamond Mine (Republic of Botswana) exposes a bi-lobate kimberlite 12 pipe that erupted during the Late-Cretaceous epoch (∼93 Ma) through Archaean 13 basement and volcano-sedimentary rocks of the Karoo Supergroup. Geological map14 ping of the crater zone of the South Pipe has revealed a 15–25 m thick in-situ 15 kimberlite pyroclastic flow deposit. The pyroclastic deposit fills in t...

The Middle Stone Age (MSA) is associated with early evidence for symbolic material culture and complex technological innovations. However, one of the most visible aspects of MSA technologies are unretouched triangular stone points that appear in the archaeological record as early as 500,000 years ago in Africa and persist throughout the MSA. How these tools were being used and discarded across ...

The lithic assemblage of the Early Pleistocene site of Bizat Ruhama, Israel demonstrates the earliest evidence for systematic secondary knapping of flakes. The site, dated to the Matuyama chron, is one of the earliest primary context Oldowan occurrences in Eurasia. According to the experimental replication of the stone-tool production sequence, the secondary knapping of flakes was a part of a m...

Introduction: Several lunar highland meteorites were found in the Dhofar region of Oman. Here we report the first data on the petrography and mineralogy of four new lunar stones, Dhofar 304, 305, 306 and 307. Dh-304 was found close to Dh-025 and 301, whereas Dh-305, 306 and 307 were recovered nearby Dh-081, 280, 302 and 303. The new meteorites are moderately weathered, impact-melt breccias. No ...

The archaeology of East Africa during the last ~65,000 years plays a central role in debates about the origins and dispersal of modern humans, Homo sapiens. Despite the historical importance of the region to these discussions, reliable chronologies for the nature, tempo, and timing of human behavioral changes seen among Middle Stone Age (MSA) and Later Stone Age (LSA) archaeological assemblages...

Correlation analyses were conducted on nickel (Ni), vanadium (V) and zinc (Zn) oral bioaccessible fractions (BAFs) and selected geochemistry parameters to identify specific controls exerted over trace element bioaccessibility. BAFs were determined by previous research using the unified BARGE method. Total trace element concentrations and soil geochemical parameters were analysed as part of the ...