The future has seldom been an object of archaeological study even though there are some very profound and deep-reaching links between past, present, and future. At the same time, archaeologists work to preserve places, environments, and associated values and knowledge for future generations. But although it is not far-fetched to claim that the future will differ from what we are used to in the present, in managing archaeological heritage, most assumptions about the future do not build on an understanding of how the future will be different from today. We argue in this paper that archaeologists should not only promote historical consciousness but also future consciousness.

The Still Bay, with its carefully crafted bifacial points, is one of the most enigmatic technocomplexes in the later Middle Stone Age of the southern African subcontinent. Heat treatment of silcrete has been documented in the Still Bay but it has recently been suggested that its application was restricted to the later stages of the production of points. This would confer a special role to heat treatment in the Still Bay if compared to the following Howiesons Poort technocomplex. In this paper, we analyse the silcrete assemblage from Hollow Rock Shelter for heating proxies to provide a first picture of the prevalence of heat treatment in the Still Bay and to investigate whether points were treated differently in terms of heat treatment than other end-products. Our results show no evidence of later-stage heat treatment but, on the contrary, comprehensive data to support heat treatment in an early stage of reduction. Relatively less silcrete was heated in the Still Bay than in later Howiesons Poort, revealing technological differences between both phases. We found a significant number of silcrete pieces that exploded during heat treatment and were still knapped afterwards, indicating a heating process that involved fast heating rates. We also found that points were not treated differently than the other end-products. These findings have implications for our understanding of the fabrication of bifacial points and the Still Bay chaîne opératoire in general.

In this contribution, we address a major puzzle in the evolution of human material culture: If matur-ing individuals just learn their parental generation’s material culture, then what is the origin of keyinnovations as documented in the archeological record? We approach this question by coupling alife-history model of the costs and benefits of experimentation with a niche-construction perspec-tive. Niche-construction theory suggests that the behavior of organisms and their modification ofthe world around them have important evolutionary ramifications by altering developmentalsettings and selection pressures. Part ofHomo sapiens’niche is the active provisioning of childrenwith play objects—sometimes functional miniatures of adult tools—and the encouragement ofobject play, such as playful knapping with stones. Our model suggests that salient material cultureinnovation may occur or be primed in a late childhood or adolescence sweet spot when cognitiveand physical abilities are sufficiently mature but before the full onset of the concerns and costsassociated with reproduction. We evaluate the model against a series of archeological cases andmake suggestions for future research.

Dating to roughly 80,000 to 70,000 years ago, components of the Still Bay technocomplex of southern Africa and their potential behavioural implications have been widely discussed. Stone points with invasive retouch, as defined over 90 years ago by Goodwin and van Riet Lowe, serve as markers for Still Bay assemblages, yet many Still Bay sites remain undated and comprehensive, comparable sets of data for their point assemblages remain unpublished. Much of the Middle Stone Age at the site of Apollo 11 in Namibia was undated until 2010, when a potential Still Bay component was announced. Although a Still Bay assemblage at Apollo 11 would represent the most northwesterly and inland expression of this technocomplex, its points have never been fully analysed. This paper presents their morphometric data and an interpretation of point-production strategies. These results are then compared with data obtained for two South African sites: Hollow Rock Shelter in the Western Cape and Umhlatuzana in KwaZulu-Natal. This comparison demonstrates that whereas there are no statistically significant differences in the morphometric data sets between the three sites, there are both similarities and differences in point-production strategies, cross-section shapes and the use of raw materials for knapping. It is suggested that these similarities and variations represent aspects of how knowledge-transfer systems and knapping conventions were followed on both intra-regional and inter-regional scales.