Project: Chronology, Adaptation and Environment of the Middle Palaeolithic in Northern Africa
Principal Investigator: Dr. Stephen Stokes
Co-Investigators: Dr. Marta Mirazón Lahr, Dr. Geoff Duller, Prof. Chris Stringer
Collaborators: Dr. Simon Armitage, Dr. Eric Husecom, Dr. Richard Bailey, Prof. Philip van Peer, Prof. Stanley Ambrose, Ms. Zenobia Jacobs
Funding: NERC / EFCHED Programme

Africa was a critical location in the emergence and dispersal of anatomically modern humans (AMHs) in the period since Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5. Environmental factors played an important role in range expansion and contraction of antecedent Middle Palaeolithic (MP) and Early Upper Palaeolithic (UP) human populations. In spite of the importance of this period, the existing chronologies both for the record of environmental changes and for the MP in Northern Africa and its relation to the Middle Stone Age (MSA) in sub-Saharan Africa are incomplete, and lack the degree of sophistication now readily available via a systematic application of conventional and novel optical dating techniques. This project aims at obtaining an absolute, robust and systematic chronological framework for a variety of African MP sites based on a consistent methodological and experimental framework. This chronology will provide a firm basis for correlation among geographically separated archaeological sites, and to global, and low latitude, climate changes which are well known from oceanic and other environmental archives.

Within the overall aim of documenting the pattern of MP AMH adaptations and human dispersals in Northern Africa, we will:

  1. Undertake optical dating of sediment samples that have already been collected from key stratified MP sites from Western (Ounjougou, Mali), and Eastern (Bir Tarfawi, Bir Sahara, Taramsa, Nazlet Kharta, Hierankopolis, Egypt, Sai, Sudan) North Africa.
  2. Undertake sampling and dating programmes within existing or planned excavations to establish an integrated chronostratigraphic framework for the MP across Northern Africa (Table 2). Study of sites from Western (Ounjougou, Mali), Eastern (BT), Northern (Haua Fteah), and Southern (Sai, Sudan; Ntuka River region and Naivasha region, Kenya, Gilgel Gibe valley, Ethiopia) regions will improve the resolution of existing data, and extend the sampling range both geographically and temporally, and inform further archaeolological interpretation.
  3. Confirm the efficacy of optical dating by systematic comparison to independent absolute methods: 14C, TIMS U-series, ESR at the key type section of Bir Tarfawi/Bir Sahara (BT); 14C at Haua Fteah; 14C at Nazlet Kharta, Egypt; Ar-Ar in the suite of sites in Kenya. The BT lake sequences are specifically identified for intercomparison as they comprise a detailed MP palaeoenvironmental (and archaeological) archive in North-East Africa of the humid (pluvial) conditions associated with the Last Interglacial.
  4. Date the timespan of Northern African MP assemblages, and inferred dispersal events, in relation to coeval regional and global climate changes, especially to changes in the intensity of the summer monsoon domain and stadial-interstadial events at low latitudes (as established from existing data) and concurrent NERC funded (NER/T/S/2001/01236) research into the timing of dust fluxes and North African arid episodes).

Date the MSA/LSA transition and the age of key indicators of the development of modern behaviour in Kenya and Ethiopia to examine their timing in relation to climatic changes