Late Pleistocene technological change and hunter gatherer behavior at Moche Borago rockshelter, Sodo-Wolayta, Ethiopia: Flaked stone artifacts from the early OIS 3 (60--43 ka) deposits

The current archaeological evidence suggests that hunter-gatherers living in Africa during the Late Pleistocene rapidly expanded into Europe and Asia by 50 -- 40 ka. It is widely believed that these populations of humans practiced a modern behavioral repertoire that included, among other things, complex social and technological skills. However, there are only a handful of sites across the Horn of Africa that date to this critical time period, known as Oxygen Isotope Stage 3. Consequently, very few studies have been able to comment on any of the behavioral or environmental preconditions that may have influenced or affected these populations prior to, and during, the hypothesized migrations via the Horn and out of Africa.;This dissertation presents new data from the Moche Borago rockshelter, located on the western flank of the volcano Mt. Damota near the current town of Sodo in Wolayta, southwest Ethiopia. Moche Borago has been studied since 2006 by the Southwest Ethiopia Archaeological Project and the sequence provides an intact series of archaeological deposits dating to early OIS 3, ~54 -- 40 ka. This dissertation focuses on the analysis of stone tools from the lower deposits at Moche Borago dating from ~54 -- 43 ka to infer technological behavioral change in southwest Ethiopia during this time period.;These findings are compared against broader paleoclimatic proxy records, which suggest that there may have been rapid and repeated fluctuations in the West African and Southwest Asian monsoon systems at this time. Monsoonal flux may have affected local ecology and resources, and it is hypothesized here that changes in the stone tools reflect local behavioral adaptations to monsoon-driven local environmental change around Moche Borago. The rapid and repeated nature of the climatic and environmental flux during this time period may have forced resident human populations in the Horn of Africa to develop a flexible behavioral strategy that allowed these people to quickly adopt their existing social and technical behaviors to suite changing contexts. Behavioral adaptations to monsoon-driven environmental changes may partially explain the unique stone tool record in the Horn of Africa during the Late Pleistocene.