Narabeb Pan: Exploring Middle Stone Age Archaeology of the Namib Sand Sea

  • Theodore Marks (Speaker)
  • George Leader (Speaker)
  • Stone, A. (Speaker)
  • Bynoe Rachel (Speaker)
  • Dominic Stratford (Speaker)

Activity: Talk or presentation › Oral presentation › Research

Description

The vast Sand Sea region of the Namib desert in western Namibia has begun to yield evidence of long-term human occupations. In the past decades, several Early Stone Age (ESA) sites have been identified and described but the Middle Stone Age (MSA) human presence remains poorly understood. Here we describe in detail the newly documented site of Narabeb Pan, a site situated deep in the dune fields that is the first to provide a tentative estimate for the chronology of Late Pleistocene MSA occupation of the Sand Sea. We also examine recent evidence for an unexpectedly high degree of dynamism in the region's unique environment, with implications for broader questions of MSA land use patterns and adaptive flexibility. Together, these data help fill in important gaps in our current understanding of diversity in Late Pleistocene human adaptations in Southern Africa.
Period2023 → …
Event title88th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology
Event typeConference
LocationPortland, Oregon, United StatesShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational

Keywords

  • Namib Sand Sea
  • Archaeology
  • Middle Stone Age
  • Palaeoenvironment
  • Namibia
  • Quaternary Science

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