During my whole life I was fascinated by stone age artefacts. Not only the aesthetic qualities of these findings, but also the stories around them and the considerations arising from their discovery, are a part of my blog. Comments and contributions are allways welcome!
About me: J.L. Katzman (Pseudonym). Born in Vienna 1956. Left Austria in 1974 and did not regret. Studied Medicine and Prehistory at a German University. Since 2002 Holder of a Chair of Nuclear Medicine at a German University.
I simply wanted to thank you for the time you have committed to providing a frequently updated blog based on stone tool technology. As as undergraduate in Archaeology, I appreciate this procrastination medium!
Many thanks and best wishes,
-Brendan, Canada
Thanks for an interesting website. I do feel that you are under-representing Southern Africa, perhaps because the Northern stone age has been studied and excavated in much more detail. Archaeology is after all a Northern invention.
Are you aware of Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa? In the cave’s stratigraphy there is a complete succession of hearths and artifacts from the (arguably) Oldovan to 100 years ago. Datings are coming in and are in many cases surprisingly precocious (eg prepared core tools from over 1MYA.) There are two papers due, one in Current Anthropology by Peter Beaumont, and another in Nature by Michael Chazan which will throw very interesting light on the evolution of stone tool making. And there’s a hearth there that’s right at bedrock.
Thanks for your comments. It is interesting, that I tried for years to get solid informations about Wonderwork and did not find any peer-reviewed article in the web. If these informations are available, I would be happy for the pdfs. Overall I do not feel that (South)-Africa is underrepresented in my blog (try MSA or handaxe as a keyword)- but I am fully aware, that my view is biased by some Eurocenriticity.
You probably know already about this but a month ago an open access paper was published on Wonderwerk cave precisely, being surely a key paper on the use of fire by Homo sp. Just in case, here there is a link:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/03/27/1117620109.abstract?sid=88fba9c9-4dad-40c3-be22-221676c4451b
Thanks a lot, I only read the paper from CA recently published, which gave more questions than answers to the problems of stratigraphy in WWC….
Yeah, well, you guys get excited about a site with a couple of dozen handaxes and a few cleavers. Have a stroll over Kathu Townlands (near Kathu in the Northern Cape) and you will be walking over innumerable lithic artifacts, perhaps as many as 20 billion. At nearby Canteen Koppie, there are perhaps mere hundreds of millions, enough to build a museum out of the axes, and in fact some of the big ones have been stood up and whitewashed as trail markers. (The biggies are up to 7kg). And have a look at this exceptional hand axe: http://jmanley.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/south-africa-2010-jonathan-manley-037.jpg which is at least 600 ky old from Kathu Pan. All within 50km of Wonderwerk. In terms of numbers and technique, the Northern Cape seems to have been an important place for the evolution of all these techniques.
The Peter Beaumont paper on Wonderwerk is now out in Current Anthropology, so you can get it if you’re linked into Jstor. Something the paper doesn’t mention is specularite and incised ochre that appear to be significantly older than Blombos Cave.
Really excellent picture Mike! Unfortunately I have no access to CA, because my University decided to unsuscribe the journal after 2010. I newer really understood why…
I read about Canteen Koppie in the wonderful book “Axe Age”. I just do not know how to take the time to stroll around there, but it would certanly a nice trip.