ABSTRACT The Middle Stone Age (MSA) of southern Africa provides crucial insight on early Homo sapiens behavioral evolution. Archaeologists have traditionally presented lithic assemblage variability as a sequence of discrete Named Stone Tool Industries (“NASTIES”, Shea, 2014, Quaternary International) or techno-complexes. Many have highlighted the issues associated with the archaeological systematics of this time period in southern Africa and beyond, yet the original framework continues to persist. This paper presents two case studies from the Late Pleistocene that further problematize the usefulness of NASTIES. First, the Pinnacle Point complex of sites show that significant landscape-scale variability between coeval lithic assemblages defies the traditional classification system. Second, investigating the relationship between technological and environmental change has led to conflicting results that cannot be resolved when NASTIES are the units of analysis. While lithic data are key for understanding early Homo sapiens behavioral evolution, NASTIES are not the best tools for doing so.

中文翻译：

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现在该退休南部非洲的NASTIES了吗？超越中石器时代岩性组合变异的文化历史框架

摘要南部非洲的中石器时代（MSA）提供了关于人类早期行为演变的重要见解。传统上，考古学家将石器组合的变异性表示为离散的命名为Stone Tool Industries（“ NASTIES”，Shea，2014，第四纪国际）或技术复杂的序列。许多人强调了与南部非洲及以后这段时间的考古系统相关的问题，但原始框架仍在继续。本文介绍了晚更新世的两个案例研究，这些案例进一步质疑了NASTIES的实用性。首先，站点的品尼高点综合体表明，古代石器组合之间的显着景观尺度变异性违反了传统的分类系统。第二，调查技术与环境变化之间的关系导致了矛盾的结果，而以NASTIES为分析单位则无法解决。虽然石块数据是理解早期人类行为演变的关键，但NASTIES并不是做到这一点的最佳工具。