Raw material sourcing and economy from the Acheulean Open-Air Site of Maropeng, Cradle of Humankind, South Africa.

Abstract

The Earlier Stone Age lithic assemblage discovered on the Maropeng property is a palimpsest of Acheulean stone tool materials and is one of only two published open-air Earlier Stone Age sites within the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site. Research on excavated lithics found that quartzite dominates as the raw material of choice in the assemblage, represented by 65.4% of the pieces. To date, no investigations have attempted to provenance the quartzite artefacts, nor explore the landscape-use behaviours. To determine the raw material source locations and transport distances, geochemical testing was applied to a subsample of cores from the Maropeng excavated assemblage and the quartzite outcrops within a three kilometre radius of the Maropeng property. Thereafter, reduction intensity data, calculated from 22 Large Cutting Tools and 60 cores, were compared to the geochemically determined possible origins. In turn, statistical correlations between outcrop distance and reduction intensity were used to interpret mobility and landscape-use behaviours. Results indicate the area hosts a multitude of quartzite outcrops, providing a broad variety of quartzite lithologies from which hominins around one million years ago could choose. Utilising variation and clustering statistical techniques, 12 of the 14 artefacts analysed through geochemical methods were linked to geological samples and probable outcrops. This research suggests hominins accessed quartzites from various locations across the landscape up to a range of 2.8 kilometres from the site of discovery. This study presents preliminary insights into the abilities of Acheulean tool manufacturing, the economy thereof, and early hominin behaviour in this region, at a landscape scale