African Middle Stone Age (MSA) populations used pigments, manufactured and wore personal ornaments, made abstract engravings, and produced fully shaped bone tools. However, ongoing research across Africa reveals variability in the emergence of cultural innovations in the MSA and their subsequent development through the Later Stone Age (LSA). When present, it appears that cultural innovations manifest regional variability, suggestive of distinct cultural traditions. In eastern Africa, several Late Pleistocene sites have produced evidence for novel activities, but the chronologies of key behavioral innovations remain unclear. The 3 m deep, well-dated, Panga ya Saidi sequence in eastern Kenya, encompassing 19 layers covering a time span of 78 kyr beginning in late Marine Isotope Stage 5, is the only known African site recording the interplay between cultural and ecological diversity in a coastal forested environment. Excavations have yielded worked and incised bones, ostrich eggshell beads (OES), beads made from seashells, worked and engraved ocher pieces, fragments of coral, and a belemnite fossil. Here, we provide, for the first time, a detailed analysis of this material. This includes a taphonomic, archeozoological, technological, and functional study of bone artifacts; a technological and morphometric analysis of personal ornaments; and a technological and geochemical analysis of ocher pieces. The interpretation of the results stemming from the analysis of OES beads is guided by an ethnoarcheological perspective and field observations. We demonstrate that key cultural innovations on the eastern African coast are evident by 67 ka and exhibit remarkable diversity through the LSA and Iron Age. We suggest the cultural trajectories evident at Panga ya Saidi were shaped by both regional traditions and cultural/demic diffusion.

非洲中石器时代（MSA）人群使用颜料，制造和佩戴个人装饰品，制作抽象雕刻，并生产出完全成型的骨骼工具。但是，非洲各地正在进行的研究表明，MSA中文化创新的出现及其在后来石器时代（LSA）之后的后续发展存在差异。当存在时，文化创新似乎表现出区域差异，暗示着独特的文化传统。在东部非洲，几个晚更新世遗址为新颖的活动提供了证据，但关键行为创新的时间顺序仍不清楚。位于肯尼亚东部的3 m深，日期合适的Panga ya Saidi层序，覆盖19个层，涵盖了从海洋同位素第5阶段后期开始的78千年的时间跨度 是唯一已知的记录沿海森林环境中文化与生态多样性之间相互作用的非洲遗址。挖掘工作产生了经过加工和切割的骨头，鸵鸟蛋壳珠（OES），由贝壳制成的珠子，经过加工和雕刻的cher石块，珊瑚碎片和贝莱石化石。在这里，我们首次提供对此材料的详细分析。这包括对骨人工制品的技术，考古，技术和功能研究；对个人装饰品的技术和形态分析；以及of石的技术和地球化学分析。对OES珠的分析所产生的结果的解释受民族考古学观点和现场观察的指导。我们证明了67 ka在东非海岸的关键文化创新是显而易见的，并且在LSA和“铁器时代”中表现出显着的多样性。我们建议，在Panga ya Saidi明显的文化轨迹是受区域传统和文化/主题传播的影响。