Archer Will, Pop Cornel M, Gunz Philipp, McPherron Shannon P
Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany.
Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany.
J Hum Evol. 2016 Aug;97:58-72. doi: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2016.05.007. Epub 2016 Jun 16.
'Still Bay' is the name given to a cultural phase within the southern African Middle Stone Age, which remains critical to our understanding of modern human behavioural evolution. Although represented in only a handful of sites, the Still Bay is widespread geographically and, at certain localities, persisted over a substantial period of time. Many studies have focused on tracing the temporal range and geographic reach of the Still Bay, as well as inferring degrees of early modern human demographic connectedness from these parameters. Variation within the Still Bay, relative to the accuracy with which it can be identified, has received considerably less attention. However, demographic models based on the spread of the Still Bay in space and time hinge on the reliability with which it can be recognized in the archaeological record. Here we document patterns of bifacial point shape and size variation in some key Still Bay assemblages, and analyse these patterns using the statistical shape analysis tools of geometric morphometrics. Morphological variation appears to be geographically structured and is driven by the spatial separation between north-eastern and south-western clusters of sites. We argue that allometric variation is labile and reflects environmentally driven differences in point reduction, whereas shape differences unrelated to size more closely reflect technological and cultural fragmentation. Our results suggest that the biogeographic structure of Middle Stone Age populations was complex during the period associated with the Still Bay, and provide little support for heightened levels of cultural interconnectedness between distantly separated groups at this time. We briefly discuss the implications of our findings for tracing classic techno-traditions in the Middle Stone Age record of southern Africa, and for inferring underpinning population dynamics from these patterns.
“斯蒂尔湾”是赋予南部非洲中石器时代一个文化阶段的名称，它对于我们理解现代人类行为进化仍然至关重要。尽管仅在少数几个遗址中有发现，但斯蒂尔湾在地理上分布广泛，并且在某些地区持续了相当长的一段时间。许多研究都集中在追溯斯蒂尔湾的时间跨度和地理范围，以及从这些参数推断早期现代人类人口的连通程度。相对于其可识别的准确性而言，斯蒂尔湾内部的变异受到的关注要少得多。然而，基于斯蒂尔湾在空间和时间上传播的人口模型取决于它在考古记录中被识别的可靠性。在这里，我们记录了一些关键的斯蒂尔湾组合中双面尖状器形状和尺寸变异的模式，并使用几何形态计量学的统计形状分析工具对这些模式进行分析。形态变异似乎具有地理结构，并且是由东北部和西南部遗址群之间的空间分离驱动的。我们认为异速生长变异是不稳定的，反映了环境驱动的尖状器制作过程中的差异，而与尺寸无关的形状差异更紧密地反映了技术和文化的碎片化。我们的结果表明，在与斯蒂尔湾相关的时期，中石器时代人口的生物地理结构是复杂的，并且几乎没有证据支持此时相距遥远的群体之间文化相互联系程度的提高。我们简要讨论了我们的发现对于追溯南部非洲中石器时代记录中的经典技术传统，以及从这些模式推断潜在人口动态的意义。
