The Stillbay (also Still bay)
industry is the name given by
archaeologists
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
A. J. H. Goodwin and C. van Riet Lowe in 1929 to a
Middle Stone Age
The Middle Stone Age (or MSA) was a period of African prehistory between the Early Stone Age and the Late Stone Age. It is generally considered to have begun around 280,000 years ago and ended around 50–25,000 years ago. The beginnings of pa ...
stone tool
A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone Ag ...
manufacturing style after the site of
Stilbaai
Stilbaai, also known as the ''Bay of Sleeping Beauty'', is a town along the southern coast of South Africa about four hours by car from Cape Town. It is part of the Hessequa Local Municipality in the Western Cape province. Alternate spellings of t ...
(also called Still Bay) in
South Africa where it was first described. It may have developed from the earlier
Acheulian
Acheulean (; also Acheulian and Mode II), from the French ''acheuléen'' after the type site of Saint-Acheul, is an archaeological industry of stone tool manufacture characterized by the distinctive oval and pear-shaped "hand axes" associated ...
types. In addition to Acheulian stone tools, bone and antler picks were also used.
Its start and end are calculated at 71.9
ka and 71.0 ka. At present, too few data exist to limit the 95%
confidence interval
In frequentist statistics, a confidence interval (CI) is a range of estimates for an unknown parameter. A confidence interval is computed at a designated ''confidence level''; the 95% confidence level is most common, but other levels, such as 9 ...
s of these date to more than 4 to 5 ky. However, available data are consistent with a duration of less than 1 ky.
Sampson in 1974 questioned its existence on the grounds that sites were not properly described and they lacked stratigraphic
integrity However, more recent work from sites such as
Blombos Cave and
Sibudu Cave attest to its existence.
It is broadly analogous to the
Mousterian culture in Europe.
Olduvai Gorge has within its many ages of tools, some of the Stillbay variety.
Tools and fire
Researchers have concluded that Stillbay people prepared the
silcrete stone out of which they made their stone tools with preheating in
human made fire to increase its workability.
Experiments involved slowly heating silcrete stones to ~350 °C.
Thermoluminescence
Thermoluminescence is a form of luminescence that is exhibited by certain crystalline materials, such as some minerals, when previously absorbed energy from electromagnetic radiation or other ionizing radiation is re-emitted as light upon h ...
confirmed that all stones analysed (limited to 26 in number due this being a destructive process) had been heated to this temperature.
Heat treatment not only increases the length of flakes that can be removed from about a half-inch to 2 inches but makes them thinner, and sharper as they can remove flakes at angles nearly parallel to the stone's surface. Heat treatment allows greater precision of fracture due to increasing the uniformity of the stone's fracture response when hit.
This research identifies this not only with Stillbay sites dated to 72,000 BP but ones that could be as old as 164,000 BP.
Kyle Brown, one of the scientists responsible for this research has been quoted as making a link with the existence of language: "These people were extremely smart ... I don't think you could have passed down these skills from generation to generation without language."
[Callaway. E. (13 August 2009]
Earliest fired knives improved stone age tool kit.
New Scientist, online
References
{{reflist, 2
Middle Stone Age cultures