Journal
QUATERNARY SCIENCE REVIEWS
Volume 196, Issue -, Pages 1-20Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2018.07.014
Keywords
Quaternary; Palaeoclimatology; Southern Africa; Glacial geomorphology; Stable isotopes; Maloti-Drakensberg; Archaeology; Human-environment dynamics; Later Stone Age; Middle Stone Age
Funding
- Arts and Humanities Research Board
- British Academy [SG-50844]
- Leverhulme Trust
- McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
- National Science Foundation [1724435]
- Prehistoric Society
- St Hugh's College (Oxford)
- Swan Fund
- Wenner-Gren Foundation
- University of Cambridge
- University of Cape Town
- University of Lampeter
- University of Michigan
- University of Oxford
- University of Witwatersrand
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie [1724435] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Behavioral and Cognitive Sci [1724435] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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The Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains are southern Africa's highest and lie at a crucial interface between the sub-continent's drier, colder, more seasonal interior and its perennially productive sub-tropical coastal belt. Their location, high elevation, and topography make them ideal for exploring human responses to late Quaternary climatic change. This paper reviews and synthesizes palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental data from the Maloti-Drakensberg region over the past 50,000 years. It then employs 325 calibrated radiocarbon dates to examine human occupational trends across the region and its component parts, discuss human-environment dynamics over this time-span, and explore patterning between particular phases of climatic change and the timing, mode, and motives of its exploitation by people. Key findings are that the region's Lesotho core may have served as a refugium for human populations during drier, more unstable climatic periods and that intensified exploitation of freshwater fish likely helped address resource stress in cooler ones. An agenda for future palaeoenvironmental and archaeological research is also mapped out. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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