Excavation and Survey at Pinnacle Point

Abstract

The transdisciplinary project centered on Pinnacle Point (the South African Coast Paleoclimate, Paleoenvironment, Paleoecology, and Paleoanthropology Project-SACP4) has as its primary goal to develop an integrated paleoclimate, paleoenvironmental, and paleoanthropological record for the south coast of South Africa spanning 400 to 30 ka, a time that spans the origins of modern humans. The African Middle Stone Age (MSA), a Middle and Late Pleistocene stone tool phase, dominates the majority of this time span. The MSA in South Africa has gained increasing attention in debates about the antiquity of modern human behavior; some researchers arguing that the South African evidence suggests an early origin of modern behavior, while others suggesting a late origin. Resolution of these debates relies on two advances: improvements in our theoretical approach and an improvement of the empirical record in Africa. Fieldwork was initiated at Pinnacle Point (Mossel Bay, South Africa) to improve the empirical record (Marean et al. 2004).