SAS Webinar
Saturday, September 13, 2025
2:00 – 3:30 PM PT
“The Middle Stone Age from Varsche Rivier 003, South Africa: environmental variation, innovation, and behavioral diversity”
By
Teresa Steele, Professor, Dept. of Anthropology – UC Davis
at
Pena Archaeology Facility (607 Pena Dr. Suite 600; Davis, CA) and via Zoom
The Middle Stone Age of Africa is significant because it provides the context for the evolution of all living people. During this time and within this technocomplex, human innovations appear which indicate the early evolution of many behaviors that are often seen as reflecting humans’ complex cognition and sociality. Historically, much of the evidence comes from archaeological sites situated in the Fynbos of South Africa’s southern and southwestern coasts. To explore diversity within the Middle Stone Age, our team initiated excavations at Varsche Rivier 003 to investigate adaptations to the arid Succulent Karoo. In deposits dating from 92-80 thousand years ago we found innovations that distinguished these populations from contemporaries living 100 km to the south in more hospitable environments. However, with subsequent environmental changes, the people using Varsche Rivier 003 employed technologies similar to the people living further in the south, indicating connections between the populations. These results provide the opportunity to further consider the contexts for Middle Stone Age innovation and cultural transmission, in southern Africa and beyond. They can be compared with other innovations found elsewhere in southern Africa, as well as in northern and eastern Africa.
Teresa Steele is a paleoanthropologist who studies the later phases of human evolution – the emergence and evolution of people who were behaviorally and anatomically like recent humans. Professor Steele’s research focuses on Middle and Late Pleistocene (780,000-10,000 years ago) archaeology – the Middle Paleolithic made by Neanderthals in Europe and the Middle Stone Age (MSA) made by their contemporaries in Africa. She studies the mode and tempo of human behavioral evolution during this time through zooarchaeology – reconstructing human subsistence and ecology through the patterns of variation found in animal bones and mollusks preserved in archaeological sites. She conducts research in South Africa, Morocco and France.
