Here we evaluate the hypothesis that during cold climatic phases, people and resources became increasingly packed along highland Lesotho's riverine corridors as the viability of palatable grasslands for large mammal hunting on the upland plateaus declined. These intensification efforts resulted in increased reliance on lower-ranked aquatic (fish) resources with knock-on effects for lithic technological organization. We compare data on the relative contribution of fishing to the diets of highland hunter-gatherers at Sehonghong rockshelter with a faunal proxy widely argued to correlate with subsistence intensification (faunal assemblage evenness). In addition, we compare these data with two measures of lithic technological intensification (cutting edge production and core reduction intensity) to test whether diet intensification tracks technological intensification. We show that at Sehonghong, aquatic resource exploitation is not always correlated with faunal assemblage evenness. We find that some layers (i.e. RF) show spikes in aquatic resource use irrespective of changes in faunal assemblage evenness. Other layers (i.e. RBL/CLBRF) were intensively occupied, but they do not have many fish. Our data also demonstrate that aquatic resource use is not correlated with lithic technological intensification. These results suggest that while aquatic resource exploitation was a ‘fallback’ option for some of Lesotho's highland hunter-gatherers, there is considerable variability. Our data show that multiple intensification dimensions were variably combined through the Late Pleistocene at Sehonghong as they were elsewhere in southern Africa.

在这里，我们评估了一个假设，即在寒冷的气候阶段，随着高地高原上用于大型哺乳动物狩猎的可口草原的生存能力下降，莱索托高地的河流走廊上的人和资源越来越多。这些集约化努力导致对低级水生（鱼类）资源的依赖增加，对石器技术组织产生连锁反应。我们将捕鱼对 Sehonghong 岩石庇护所高原狩猎采集者饮食的相对贡献数据与广泛认为与生存集约化（动物群集均匀度）相关的动物群代理进行比较。此外，我们将这些数据与两种岩屑技术集约化的测量（切削刃生产和岩心减少强度）进行比较，以测试日粮集约化是否跟踪技术集约化。我们表明，在Sehonghong，水生资源开发并不总是与动物群落均匀度相关。我们发现一些层（即 RF）显示出水生资源利用的峰值，而与动物群落均匀度的变化无关。其他层（即 RBL/CLBRF）被密集占据，但它们没有很多鱼。我们的数据还表明，水生资源的利用与岩屑技术集约化无关。这些结果表明，虽然水生资源开发是莱索托一些高地狩猎采集者的“后备”选择，但存在相当大的可变性。