ABSTRACT

Wonderboom remains largely excluded from discussions about the Earlier Stone Age of southern Africa, despite having one of the largest Acheulean assemblages for the region. With this contribution, we revisit its large cutting tool assemblage (namely the handaxes, cleavers, picks and knives) and investigate some of the tool manufacturing preferences of the hominins who used the site during the Earlier Stone Age. We also provide an inter-site comparison of handaxes with another later and two early Acheulean sites from South Africa, wherein the Wonderboom assemblage clusters with the later Acheulean and is distinguished from the early Acheulean assemblages. This tentatively places Wonderboom within the South African Acheulean chronology and provides the first characterization of later Acheulean LCT production strategies for the region that includes the Cradle of Humankind.

摘要

Wonderboom 仍然在很大程度上被排除在有关南部非洲早期石器时代的讨论之外，尽管拥有该地区最大的阿舍利组合之一。有了这个贡献，我们重新审视了它的大型切削工具组合（即手斧、切肉刀、镐和刀），并调查了在早期石器时代使用该地点的人类的一些工具制造偏好。我们还提供了手斧与另一个较晚和两个来自南非的早期阿舍利遗址的现场比较，其中 Wonderboom 组合与后来的 Acheulean 聚集在一起，并与早期的 Acheulean 组合不同。