ROAD database
(CC BY-SA 4.0 ROCEEH)" longitude="24.25" latitude="-31" zoom="5" width="300", height="300"> The Stillbay or Still Bay

industry Industry may refer to: Economics * Industry (economics), a generally categorized branch of economic activity * Industry (manufacturing), a specific branch of economic activity, typically in factories with machinery * The wider industrial sector ...

was named by

archaeologists Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

A. J. H. Goodwin and C. van Riet Lowe in 1929, and is 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 ...

stone tool Stone tools have been used throughout human history but are most closely associated with prehistoric cultures and in particular those of the Stone Age. Stone tools may be made of either ground stone or knapped stone, the latter fashioned by a ...

manufacturing style after the site of Stilbaai (also called Still Bay) in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

where it was first described. It may have developed from the earlier

Acheulian Acheulean (; also Acheulian and Mode II), from the French 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 with ''Homo ...

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 intervals 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 Blombos Cave is an archaeological site located in Blombos Private Nature Reserve, about 300 km east of Cape Town on the Southern Cape coastline, South Africa. The cave contains Middle Stone Age (MSA) deposits currently dated at between c. ...

and

Sibudu Cave Sibudu Cave is a rock shelter in a sandstone cliff in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It is an important Middle Stone Age site occupied, with some gaps, from years ago to years ago. Evidence of some of the earliest examples of modern h ...

attest to its existence. It is broadly analogous to the

Mousterian The Mousterian (or Mode III) is an Industry (archaeology), archaeological industry of Lithic technology, stone tools, associated primarily with the Neanderthals in Europe, and with the earliest anatomically modern humans in North Africa and We ...

culture in Europe.

Olduvai Gorge The Olduvai Gorge or Oldupai Gorge in Tanzania is one of the most important paleoanthropology, paleoanthropological localities in the world; the many sites exposed by the gorge have proven invaluable in furthering understanding of early human evo ...

has within its many ages of tools, some of the Stillbay variety.

Tools and fire

Researchers have concluded that Stillbay people prepared the

silcrete Silcrete is an indurated (resists crumbling or powdering) soil duricrust formed when surface soil, sand, and gravel are cemented by dissolved silica. The formation of silcrete is similar to that of calcrete, formed by calcium carbonate, and ferri ...

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 hea ...

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."

Stone tool industry

A paper announcing the Still Bay Industry was published on January 5, 2007. This paper details the history of excavations at the site of

, linking the levels of artifacts found beneath the higher level, the Howiesons Poort Industry, to sites in South Africa, such as

and Hollow Rock Shelter, establishing a wider geographic range to an industry that was once thought to be limited to the western areas of South Africa. Another site, Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter, located in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa has been linked to the Still Bay Industry, this based on comparison to the recent descriptions of Blombos Cave and Sibudu Cave. Serrated pieces are found at this site as well, potentially older or a regional variation.

References

{{reflist, 2 Middle Stone Age cultures