Lesedi/Ifas : 16 Years of Archaeological Survey on our Hunter-Gatherer Ancestors at Diepkloof Rock Shelter

Date de publication:

24 Octobre 2014

Mots-clefs:

blogs
hypotheses.org
blog
Afrique du Sud
archéologie

Publié ici :

24 Octobre 2014

Mis à jour le :

21 Juin 2017

Zone géographique:

Afrique

People are usually curious and fascinated when it comes to prehistoric archaeology. Through meticulous and well-thought-out fieldwork, archaeologists unearth cultural and biological archives that are sometimes buried for hundreds of thousands of years, endeavouring to interpret them in order to protect a heritage, recover a memory and, in the end, understand the adaptations and mechanisms observed in human societies.

The objective of prehistory is basically to study human societies before writing. The main phase of our 16-year survey revealed a peculiar economy relying on hunting and gathering. While the period surveyed seems rather distant if not foreign, we must remember that hunter-gatherers were still dominating the Cape plains only a few centuries ago. Today, populations of hunter-gatherers are still found living in the Kalahari, although their confinement to specific are as goes against their very subsistence logic.

This testimony of otherness strikes every individual who ventures into the Drakensberg or the Cederberg, and is surprised by the figurative or abstract rock art found there, marking places of memory. Likewise, otherness appears to each person who visits the Origins Centre at the University of the Witwatersrand or the Iziko Museum in Cape Town.

Yet, prehistory is also a challenge for the imagination: although there is no need to invent our past, we must first be able to think about the vastness of time and space. Prehistoric research can then be divided into several intelligible, thematic and/or chronological sections. One of the major questions posed in this regard concerns the origin of our species, i.e. the anatomically modern man or homo sapiens sapiens.

The most recent research based on the anatomical and palaeogenetic study of human remains, agrees to recognise that our species originated in Africa, probably from East Africa, and goes back to around 200 000 BP. However, our common strain would only have scattered over the whole of Africa then Eurasia much later, around 50 000 BP. Diversification and spreading scenarios tend to be complex in this regard. It is in this context that the Diepkloof Rock Shelter project was born: what happened between 200 000 and 50 000 BP on the African continent? What decisive changes can explain the future success of the first societies of anatomically modern men?

By Guillaume Porraz.

Guillaume Porraz obtained a PhD in Prehistory from the University of Aix-Marseille (2005), followed by post-doctorates at the University of Cape Town (2006-2008) and the University of Tuebingen (2008-2010). He has been a CNRS Research Fellow since 2010, first at the University of Paris X-Nanterre, then at IFAS since 2013. Guillaume is a specialist on lithic technology and focusses on the evolution of technical systems in hunter-gatherer societies. His field surveys are preferentially on Western Europe (France and Italy) and South Africa.

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