Africa from MIS 6-2 Population Dynamics and Paleoenvironments

About this book

Bringing together archaeological, paleoenvironmental, paleontological and genetic data, Africa from MIS 6-2 makes a first attempt to reconstruct African population histories from out species' evolution to the Holocene. Africa during Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 6 to 2 (~190-12,000 years ago) witnessed the biological development and behavioural florescence of our species. Modern human population dynamics, which involved multiple population expansions, dispersals, contractions and extinctions, played a central role in our species' evolutionary trajectory. So far, the demographic processes – modern human population sizes, distributions and movements – that occurred within Africa during this critical period have been consistently under-addressed.

The authors of Africa from MIS 6-2 aim at (1) examining the impact of this glacial-interglacial-glacial cycle on human group sizes, movements and distributions throughout Africa; (2) investigating the macro- and micro-evolutionary processes underpinning our species' anatomical and behavioural evolution; and (3) setting an agenda whereby Africa can benefit from, and eventually contribute to, the increasingly sophisticated theoretical and methodological palaeodemographic frameworks developed on other continents.

Contents

Chapter 1 Africa from MIS 6-2: The Florescence of Modern Humans

Part I Coasts
Chapter 2 Mid to Late Quaternary Landscape and Environmental Dynamics in the Middle Stone Age of Southern South Africa
3 Chapter Technological Change and the Importance of Variability: the Western Cape of South Africa from MIS 5-2
Chapter 4 Cultural Change, Demography, and the Archaeology of the Last 100 kyr in Southern Africa
Chapter 5 Patterns of Hominin Occupation and Cultural Diversity Across the Gebel Akhdar of Northern Libya over the Last ~200 kyr

Part II Deserts
Chapter 6 Climate Change and Modern Human Occupation of the Sahara from MIS 6-2
Chapter 7 Climate, Environment and Population Dynamics in Pleistocene Sahara
Chapter 8 Technological Systems, Population Dynamics and Historical Process in the MSA of Northern Africa
Chapter 9 Late Quaternary Environmental Change and Human Occupation of the Southern African Interior
Chapter 10 The Kalahari During MIS 6-2 (190-12 ka): Archaeology, Paleoenvironment and Population Dynamics
Chapter 11 Paleoenvironments, Sea Levels and Land Use in Namaqualand, South Africa, During MIS 6-2

Part III Grasslands, Woodlands and Rainforests
Chapter 12 Human Evolution in Late Quaternary Eastern Africa
Chapter 13 Environmental Change, Ungulate Biogeography, and their Implications for Early Human Dispersals in Equatorial East Africa
Chapter 14 Follow the Senqu: Maloti-Drakensberg Paleoenvironments and Implications for Early Human Dispersals into Mountain Systems
Chapter 15 Across Rainforests and Woodlands: A Systematic Re-appraisal of the Lupemban Middle Stone Age in Central Africa
Chapter 16 The Later Pleistocene in the Northeastern Central African Rainforest

Part IV Broader Perspectives
Chapter 17 The Late Quaternary Hominins of Africa: The Skeletal Evidence from MIS 6-2
Chapter 18 A Genetic Perspective on African Prehistory
Chapter 19 Africa From MIS 6-2: Where Do We Go From Here?

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Biography

Dr. Sacha C. Jones is a postdoctoral research associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. She specializes in the Palaeolithic period, in particular that of North Africa and India.

Dr. Brian A. Stewart is a paleolithic archaeologist in the Department of Anthropology and the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research focuses on the archaeology of prehistoric hunter-gatherers in Africa, especially southern Africa.