Niang, K. orcid.org/0000-0002-9281-5105, Blinkhorn, J. orcid.org/0000-0002-9399-5515, Bateman, M.D. orcid.org/0000-0003-1756-6046 et al. (1 more author) (2023) Longstanding behavioural stability in West Africa extends to the Middle Pleistocene at Bargny, coastal Senegal. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 7 (7). pp. 1141-1151. ISSN 2397-334X
Abstract
Middle Stone Age (MSA) technologies first appear in the archaeological records of northern, eastern and southern Africa during the Middle Pleistocene epoch. The absence of MSA sites from West Africa limits evaluation of shared behaviours across the continent during the late Middle Pleistocene and the diversity of subsequent regionalized trajectories. Here we present evidence for the late Middle Pleistocene MSA occupation of the West African littoral at Bargny, Senegal, dating to 150 thousand years ago. Palaeoecological evidence suggests that Bargny was a hydrological refugium during the MSA occupation, supporting estuarine conditions during Middle Pleistocene arid phases. The stone tool technology at Bargny presents characteristics widely shared across Africa in the late Middle Pleistocene but which remain uniquely stable in West Africa to the onset of the Holocene. We explore how the persistent habitability of West African environments, including mangroves, contributes to distinctly West African trajectories of behavioural stability.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Archaeology; Palaeoecology |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Geography (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 05 Jun 2023 13:32 |
Last Modified: | 18 Jul 2023 01:26 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41559-023-02046-4 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:199678 |