100th century BCE
Southern Africa, including South Africa, Lesotho, and the Border Cave region
The Howieson's Poort Industry is a Middle Stone Age blade-oriented tradition documented at several southern African cave and open-site sequences. Its characteristic assemblages combine Middle Stone Age flaking methods with a dominant non-Levallois blade technology, backed and truncated blades and flakes, burins, lunates, and unifacial points. The excerpt records dates older than 48,700 BP at Border Cave, more than 50,000 years at Rose Cottage Cave, and a probable complex age of approximately 95,000–80,000 BP, while emphasizing chronological uncertainty and regional variation.
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The Story
The Howieson's Poort Industry is presented as a distinctive Middle Stone Age tradition occurring across widely separated ecological regions of southern Africa. At the type-site in the eastern Cape, the occupation is interpreted as more likely a seasonal hunting camp than a base camp because the shelter is small and its deposit shallow. Its technological profile combines Middle Stone Age flaking methods with a dominant non-Levallois blade technology.
Characteristic tools include backed and truncated blades and flakes, burins, and unifacial points. At Border Cave, the Howieson's Poort assemblages include narrow ribbon-like blades and lunates made on fragments of Levallois blades, with backing usually placed on the ends of the arcs. Small sub-triangular pressure-flaked points occur as well, while burins are apparently absent in that sequence.
The chronology is complex. Border Cave provides a date older than 48,700 BP, Rose Cottage Cave has an upper Howieson's Poort horizon older than 50,000 years, and an aspartic-acid racemization result suggests about 60,000 years for one Border Cave layer. Yet the excerpt also gives a probable age of approximately 95,000–80,000 years for the complex and warns that the young date from the type-site was probably contaminated.
100th century BCE
Southern Africa, including South Africa, Lesotho, and the Border Cave region
The Howieson's Poort Industry is a Middle Stone Age blade-oriented tradition documented at several southern African cave and open-site sequences. Its characteristic assemblages combine Middle Stone Age flaking methods with a dominant non-Levallois blade technology, backed and truncated blades and flakes, burins, lunates, and unifacial points. The excerpt records dates older than 48,700 BP at Border Cave, more than 50,000 years at Rose Cottage Cave, and a probable complex age of approximately 95,000–80,000 BP, while emphasizing chronological uncertainty and regional variation.
Continue exploring
The Story
The Howieson's Poort Industry is presented as a distinctive Middle Stone Age tradition occurring across widely separated ecological regions of southern Africa. At the type-site in the eastern Cape, the occupation is interpreted as more likely a seasonal hunting camp than a base camp because the shelter is small and its deposit shallow. Its technological profile combines Middle Stone Age flaking methods with a dominant non-Levallois blade technology.
Characteristic tools include backed and truncated blades and flakes, burins, and unifacial points. At Border Cave, the Howieson's Poort assemblages include narrow ribbon-like blades and lunates made on fragments of Levallois blades, with backing usually placed on the ends of the arcs. Small sub-triangular pressure-flaked points occur as well, while burins are apparently absent in that sequence.
The chronology is complex. Border Cave provides a date older than 48,700 BP, Rose Cottage Cave has an upper Howieson's Poort horizon older than 50,000 years, and an aspartic-acid racemization result suggests about 60,000 years for one Border Cave layer. Yet the excerpt also gives a probable age of approximately 95,000–80,000 years for the complex and warns that the young date from the type-site was probably contaminated.
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