“Early” Middle Stone Age Lithic Technology of the Kapthurin Formation (Kenya)

The production of Levallois flakes is considered a hallmark of many Middle Stone Age (MSA) sites, but this aspect of African Pleistocene hominin technology remains poorly documented relative to that from adjacent regions. The site of Koimilot, from the Kapthurin Formation of Kenya, preserves stratified artifact assemblages that show use of multiple Levallois methods to produce flakes of varied shapes and sizes, comparable to that described from Levantine and European Middle Paleolithic sites. Koimilot has an age of ∼200,000 years on the basis of geochemical correlation with dated volcanic tephra and therefore joins a small but growing number of “early” MSA sites which antedate the last interglacial (∼130,000) years ago and provide the most relevant comparisons for understanding the end of the Acheulian. The Kapthurin Formation archaeological sequence suggests that it is the diversification of Levallois technology rather than its origin that characterizes early MSA assemblages. MSA Levallois technology may have developed from local Acheulian antecedents.