PANS in the sands: Palaeoenvironmental context of surface Archaeology in the Namib Sand Sea

  • Stone, A. (Speaker)
  • George Leader (Speaker)
  • Dominic Stratford (Speaker)
  • Theodore Marks (Speaker)
  • Kaarina Efraim (Speaker)
  • Bynoe Rachel (Speaker)
  • Rachel Smedley (Speaker)
  • Andrew Gunn (Speaker)
  • Sepehr Kharazian (Speaker)
  • Eugene Marais (Speaker)
  • Tessa Spano (Speaker)
  • Mark Bateman (Speaker)

Activity: Talk or presentation › Oral presentation › Research

Description

The rich lithic record in the hyper-arid northern Namib Sand Sea is visible in interdune pans/vleis. Many of the sites lie along former Tsondab River course(s), now blocked in the east by high dunes before the dune-free Tsondab Flats, and again dune covered 30-40 km further west, from the site of Narabeb onward. The lithic record along this former river was reported to contain both MSA and ESA at two sites in the 1970s, although our observations at those sites, and along a full-desert-width transect shows exclusively MSA assemblages.

We provide a revised chronology for Narabeb, alongside a classification of >300 artefacts. Our feldspar post-IR-IRSL analysis exceeds the upper age limit of the quartz luminescence signal in this region (saturates at ~150±20 Gy or ~70-90 ka). Dating aeolian sands in-between layers of lacustrine sediments constrains water-ponding between <231 ± 20 ka and >223 ± 19 ka and again after 134 ± 11 ka. Given it is difficult to envisage a scenario of human presence here without a source of water we cautiously assume contemporaneity. The chert and hornfel lithic lithology matches local (5-10 km radius) surface-expressed cobble-rich units, likely Late-Miocene in age.

Work at the complex setting of Namib-IV, north of the Tsondab system, just ~8 km south of the !Khuiseb River, has both ESA/Acheulean and MSA lithics and fossil fauna. We will map buried channels near Namib-IV and of the former Tsondab ‘green corridor’, and analyse and date further pans.
Period22 Jul 2025
Event title27th Biennial Meeting of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists (SAfA 2025): Crossroads Through Time
Event typeConference
LocationFaroShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational

Keywords

  • Namib Sand Sea
  • Archaeology
  • ESA
  • MSA
  • lithics
  • Quaternary Science
  • Luminescence Dating

Research Beacons, Institutes and Platforms

  • Manchester Environmental Research Institute

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