Comparative analysis of Middle Stone Age artifacts in Africa (CoMSAfrica)

Abstract

Spatial and temporal variation among African Middle Stone Age (MSA) archeological assemblages provide essential cultural and behavioral data for understanding the origin, evolution, diversification, and dispersal of Homo sapiens—and, possibly, interactions with other hominin taxa.1, 2 However, incorporating archeological data into a robust framework suited to replicable, quantitative analyses that can be integrated with observations drawn from studies of the human genome, hominin morphology, and paleoenvironmental contexts requires the development of a unified comparative approach and shared units of analysis. Lithic (stone) artifacts provide the fundamental source of information for continental-scale comparisons of past hominin behavior because they quantitatively dominate the Paleolithic record, and unlike organic artifacts made of bone or shell, they are preserved in a larger variety of depositional settings. However, attempts to integrate African MSA lithic data from different periods or regions have suffered from divergent research traditions among archeologists that employ incompatible approaches, definitions, and data collection methods. Communication among analysts is further constrained by the presence of varied theoretical and methodological schools, including analytical grammars that may represent distinct ways of viewing, describing, measuring, and interpreting the world (i.e., attribute analysis vs. chaîne opératoire). These issues are further exacerbated by differences in geography, geology, ecology, and research intensity between different parts of Africa. Archeologists across Africa thus lack a common, intersubjective and transparent system for lithic analysis, with currently few shared basic definitions or protocols of measurements. Yet, objectivity and replicability are two functional requirements of science.