#aterian

Astero Ref is here!

By Michel-georges bernard - CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11054514

In the Middle Paleolithic, stone tools began to have more diversity to meet the needs of the various locations humans had explored and the materials available to them. The Aterian style, centered in North Africa, is one of the oldest of these regional styles, dating from about 150,000-20,000 years ago. While the Levallois-type tools were found in conjunction with Aterian tools, archaeologists think this reflects 'how early modern humans dispersed into previously uninhabitable environments', but the labels are useful for research purposes.

The defining feature of Aterian tools was that they had a tang, or short protuberance, extended from them. The sites where these tools have been found are connected by the river systems of the Green Sahara, suggesting that there is much more connection between these communities that previously thought. With the difficulty of archaeology in the Sahara, it's difficult to know the exact geographical range. As the Sahara went from Green to arid, those who made the Aterian points moved south in to the Sahel and tropical Africa.

By José-Manuel Benito Álvarez —> Locutus Borg - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1235216

It's not known if they used a tool like an atlatl, but their points resemble those that are used with a spear thrower. Their stone tools were most likely hafted, that is having a handle or shaft of some sort applied to them, making all their tools usable for more tasks and easier to work with, and more effective. In addition to leaf-shaped stone tools, the Aterian peoples also appear to be some of the first to have 'engaged with symbolically constituted material culture', or that they created personal ornamentation, such as shells used as beads, found far enough inland to suggest a long distance trade or social network. It has also been suggested that the Aterian people spoke a'Nilo-Saharan' language, which is a 'proposed linguistic family consisting of around 210 Native African languages spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile Rivers'.

by Emanuele Cancellieri & Savino di Lernia

(Open access source: Quaternary International 300:142-152, 2013 via Academia.edu).

Research conducted since the 1990s in SW Libya has provided wide-ranging data on the Pleistocene archaeology of this vast region, which principally relies on surface scatters of lithic artefacts, a series of soundings and two MSA/Aterian dated sites. The Middle Stone Age of the region is thought to date from roughly MIS 6/5 to approximately 60 ka (the latest dated Aterian occurrence). Its distribution varies from sand seas to mountain ranges, with different states of preservation and archaeological visibility. This paper presents data from the last surveys (2010–2011) carried out on 46 transects across the Messak massif. One component of the research strategy was specifically designed to handle the impressive Pleistocene record through sampling a series of spots placed at fixed distances along predetermined survey strips. Field documentation of the techno-typological traits allowed the creation of a territorial data-set used to infer patterns of raw material exploitation, technological variability and the significance of the principal chrono-cultural markers. Quartzarenite, the most available and used raw material, is a diffusely distributed resource. This should have played a role in patterns of land use and mobility and, ultimately, in the composition of archaeological assemblages, mostly characterised by complete reduction sequences. Variability in the application of the Levallois method highlights widespread adoption of recurrent and lineal schemes. Among the latter, point production is extremely rare. The retouched blanks inventory is dominated by scrapers and notches, whereas more specialised tool classes (i.e., tanged pieces, points, foliates) are less common. The dimensions of a small sample of Aterian artefacts provisionally signal a higher degree of homogeneity among pointed tanged specimens than other types. Despite the overwhelming presence of roughly labelled MSA contexts, these show little evidence of a MSA stricto sensu chrono-cultural signature, among which scanty but precise elements are comparable with the sub-Saharan and Nile valley early Middle Stone Age, reinforcing the picture of multiple dispersals across the Sahara and North Africa around MIS 6/5. The evolution of MSA occupation and its cultural trajectories is difficult to assess, while the last phases, represented here by the Aterian, can be framed in hyperarid MIS 4 – after the dates from Acacus – and likely represent the adaptation of residual groups almost confined to mountain environments.