The Middle Stone Age of Zambia, South Central Africa

author

Lawrence Barham, with contributors

Little is known about the Middle Stone Age archaeological record north of the Zambezi River compared with southern and eastern Africa. This book redresses the balance. Dr Barham reassesses the contribution of south-central Africa to the development of behaviourally and anatomically modern humans, using the results of archaeological excavations at Mumbwa Caves and Twin Rivers, Zambia. New evidence for the extensive use of pigment and backed tool technology 270,000 years ago suggests that behavioural modernity developed earlier than previously thought.
The combined archaeological and environmental records of Twin Rivers and Mumbwa Caves span the emergence of Middle Stone Age flake tool technologies about 300,000 years ago through to the gradual development of a microlithic Later Stone Age after 30,000 BP. These changes take place against a background of dramatic shifts in climate during the Middle and Late Pleistocene with the waxing and waning of the mega-Kalahari desert affecting human demography and behaviour.
Dr Barham integrates contributions from leading researchers in the earth sciences with new and existing archaeological data to provide an up-to-date synthesis of the early prehistory of the region.

contributors include:

P Andrews, M Avery, L Bishop, P Davies, N Debenham, M Gilmour, A Goudie, F Grine, E Jenkins, R Klein, K Cruz-Uribe, M Madella, O Pearson, A Pinto, S Reynolds, M Simms, S Stokes, C Stringer and T Young.

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© Western Academic & Specialist Press Ltd 2004