Mario Petrinovic wrote:
https://www.sci.news/archaeology/lion-cavern-ochre-mine-eswatini-13403.html
Nice find. The paper is here
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-53050-6
Published: 24 October 2024
Ochre communities of practice in
Stone Age Eswatini
Abstract
Our species and other hominins have used
earth mineral pigments since at least
~500,000 years ago, if not earlier. Its
preservation and ubiquity within
archaeological records across sub-Saharan
Africa are well documented, but
regional-scale networks of mineral selection,
mining, transport, and use is an
underdeveloped field. Here, we present a
framework for interpreting regional
variations within an overarching
ochre-behavioral community of practice.
Deep-time records of ochre provisioning
span the final Middle Stone Age and Late
Stone Age in modern day Eswatini,
revealing longstanding cultural
continuities in the intergenerational
transmission of shared knowledge on
landscapes, geology, and the desired
physicochemical properties of mineral
pigments. These communities of practice
did not develop in isolation, and were
part of a wider system of relations that
were influenced and mediated by social
interactions, such as technological
learning, seasonal traveling, material
culture exchange, and symbolic
expression. We use compositional analyses
to determine localized ochre procurement
strategies and long-distance transport
across a network of fifteen archaeological
sites and mineral resources. Newly refined
chronologies from Lion Cavern at Ngwenya
using optically stimulated luminescence
dating also reaffirm its antiquity as the
oldest known evidence for intensive ochre
mining worldwide (~48,000 years ago).
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