Howiesons Poort
Howiesons Poort (also called HP) is a technological and cultural period characterized by material evidence with shared design features found in South Africa, Lesotho, and Namibia.
[1] It was named after the Howieson's Poort Shelter archaeological site near Grahamstown in South Africa, where the first assemblage of these tools was discovered.
Howiesons Poort is notable for its relatively complex tools, technological innovations, and cultural objects evidencing symbolic expression.
While there is no universally agreed-upon explanation as to why this happened, there are several leading proposed theories, some of which involve shifts in resource availability and foraging strategies.
[4] Artifacts associated with Howiesons Poort were first described in 1927 by Reverend P. Stapleton, a Jesuit schoolteacher at St Aidan's College, and John Hewitt, a zoologist and director of the local Albany museum.
This finding not only contradicts the notion of Howiesons Poort as a transitional technocomplex, but pushes back the dates for these so-called "advanced" technologies.
Sites that contain Howiesons Poort assemblages are spread geographically throughout southern Africa, encompassing a variety of environments that include coastal, near-coastal, inland and mountainous.
[13] Upon an analysis of the frequency of faunal remains, the team found increased levels of human occupation during the period of open grasslands.
Therefore, there is evidence that the changing of the climate into moister conditions resulted in the development of more extensive forests, at least in the near-coastal region which includes Sibudu Cave, without completely eliminating more open savannah woodlands.
[20] This method of dating pushes back the proposed ages of Howiesons Poort to 55 to 80 thousand years ago, which would make it significantly older than previously believed.
[29] Micro-residue analysis on Howiesons Poort stone tools, such as those from KwaZulu-Natal sites, show evidence of the use of ochre as an organic adhesive for hafting.
Replication experiments have shown that ochre is a useful loading agent for adhesion; however, there are other alternative ingredients that people during the Middle Stone Age likely knew about and could have been using instead.
[33][34] For most sites, there is a clear preference of Howiesons Poort knappers for using fine-grained materials, such as quartz and silcrete, to produce the small blades and backed tools that are seen in the assemblages.
The tools that characterize Howiesons Poort are highly specialized and reliable, which has led researchers to propose that the technocomplex came about during a time of planned and strategic foraging of predictable, known, and localized resources.
[40] This strategy was probably accompanied with more complex social structures and more frequent instances of information sharing about the environment,[39] which mitigates risk while foraging and is also evidenced by the discoveries of symbolic objects seen with Howiesons Poort assemblages.
[5][41][42][25] Groups participated in the exchange of hunting tools, which helped maintain social networks and information sharing amidst a difficult climate.
[45] Like the earlier Stillbay industry, creators of Howiesons Poort artifacts seem to have engaged in symbolic behavior, having left behind engraved ochre, ostrich eggshells and shell beads.
[4] One theory purports that this period was marked by an increase in residential mobility, and so the costs of investing time into carefully crafting tools began to outweigh the benefits of having a complex toolkit.
[4][57] Another hypothesis states that the severe conditions of MIS 4 caused a population increase towards the latter part, and so as groups of people became extinct the Howiesons Poort tools that they had been producing were abandoned.
[59] A competing theory purports that, during MIS 4, climatic conditions made the areas of inland southern African inhospitable for human occupation.
[62] A separate hypothesis argues that Howiesons Poort shows a period of population expansion and strong networks, allowing for the transmission of skills.
[63][64] The Post-Howiesons Poort era occurs during a period of population contraction and isolation of living groups, promoting instead the production of simpler tools.
