Unretouched flake production as a characteristic of the pre-Still Bay at Sibhudu Cave, South Africa

Abstract

Sibhudu is one of the most important Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites in southern Africa and it has abundant lithic assemblages dating from before 77,000 years ago to 38,000 years ago. At about 70,000 years ago, in layers RGS and RGS 2 of the Wadley excavation, the Still Bay technocomplex includes many bifacial points that are foliate or have rounded bases, as well as fragments of points and thousands of shaping flakes. In contrast, the underlying LBG layers, with ages of 73,000 and 72,000 years ago, yield numerous flakes and some denticulates, but only rare points. In this paper, we describe the technology of the lithic assemblage from square B4, layers LBG 3 to LBG 1 from the Wadley excavations and we identify flake production and core reduction methods. We did not find products such as final shaping flakes from bifacial tool thinning or resharpening and this suggests that the LBG assemblage does not fit definitions of either the iLembian or the Still Bay because both of these technocomplexes emphasise bifacial tool production. In the LBG layers, sharp, unretouched flakes were consistently produced from inclined cores. In LBG 3 there are many elongated flakes, but in LBG 1 flakes are most often short, implying some change in technological behaviour through time. Further work needs to be done to assess whether the technology observed in the LBG layers is specific to Sibhudu, or whether it represents a regional trend in the MSA of KwaZulu-Natal. One possibility is that the LBG assemblages represent short-term technological variation of the kind evident in the 58,000 year-old Sibudan.