Recent research on the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa’s central interior underscores the pivotal role played by this region in the emergence and cultural evolution of African Homo sapiens. In the central interior, specifically the Grassland and Savanna Biomes of South Africa’s Free State Province, the earliest southern African Homo sapiens fossil originates from the site of Florisbad. Despite this, archaeological data remain sparse, hindering efforts to integrate cultural evidence and homin...

In southern Africa, Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5 (~ 130 − 71 ka) is a crucial period in the evolution of Homo sapiens but poorly documented in the central interior of the subcontinent. We report here results from Baden-Baden 2, a newly discovered open-air site in the western Free State grasslands of South Africa that documents Middle Stone Age occupations dated to MIS 5. The lithic assemblage differs from known MIS 5 and post-MIS 5 industries and shows similarities with industries typically date...

The semi-arid grasslands of the Free State Province of South Africa have produced the earliest evidence of the presence of Homo sapiens in the subcontinent, together with an extensive Pleistocene palaeoenvironmental record based on fossil assemblages. However, the known Middle Stone Age (MSA) archaeological sites in the Free State are limited to a few major localities that cannot be integrated into a unitary narrative, thus hindering our understanding of human cultural evolution in the central i...

Infrared spectroscopy is the study of the interaction between infrared radiation and matter. Its application to the characterization of archaeological sedimentary contexts has produced invaluable insights into the archaeological record and past human activities. This Element aims at providing a practical guide to infrared spectroscopy of archaeological sediments and their contents taken as a dynamic system, in which the different components observed today are the result of multiple formation pro...