page_title: Blombos Cave
section_title: Still Bay bifacial points
hierarchical_section_title: Blombos Cave / Archaeological remains and material culture from the Middle Stone Age levels / Still Bay bifacial points
caption_attribution_description: English: Lithic Industries at Blombos Cave, Southern Cape, South Africa (c. 105 – 90 Ka)
context_page_description: Blombos Cave is an archaeological site located in Blombos Private Nature Reserve, about 300 km east of Cape Town on the Southern Cape coastline, South Africa. The cave contains Middle Stone Age deposits currently dated at between c. 100,000 and 70,000 years Before Present, and a Late Stone Age sequence dated at between 2000 and 300 years BP. The cave site was first excavated in 1991 and field work has been conducted there on a regular basis since 1997, and is ongoing.
  The excavations at Blombos Cave have yielded important new information on the behavioural evolution of anatomically modern humans. The archaeological record from this cave site has been central in the ongoing debate on the cognitive and cultural origin of early humans and to the current understanding of when and where key behavioural innovations emerged among Homo sapiens in southern Africa during the Late Pleistocene.
context_section_description: The most extensive and well-documented sample of so-called Still Bay points in southern Africa comes from the Still Bay sequence in the Blombos Cave. Still Bay points are the fossiles directeurs of the Still Bay techno-complex, and they conform to bifacially worked stone points, popularly referred to as "lance-heads", "laurel leaf-shaped" or "willow leaf-shaped" stone points. Still Bay points have bifacially retouched sides, are elliptic to lanceolate shaped and most often they have two pointed apices.
  Since the excavation in Blombos Cave began, more than 500 points or point fragments have been recovered, of which 352 have been described in detail. The dominant raw material used for Still Bay point production in Blombos Cave is silcrete (72%), followed by quartzite (15%) and quartz (13%). Whereas the quartzite and quartz raw material is easily available in close vicinity to the cave, the exact source for silcrete has not been established. It is speculated that it may come from outcrops in Riversdale or Albertinia – some 30 km away – or from now underwater sources. Approximately 90% of the Still Bay points recovered from Blombos Cave have been classified as "production rejects", and  preliminary analysis of the lithic material from the ‘CC’ unit suggests that the majority of the lithic debitage are by-products of bifacial point manufacture. Villa et al. (2009:458) conclude that: Blombos was a workshop in the sense that the making of points was a primary – though not exclusive – activity at the site.
   
  The manufacture sequence of Still Bay points has been divided into four main production phases. While hard hammer and direct percussion was used in the initial reduction phase (phase 1), followed by soft hammer and marginal percussion (phase 2), pressure flaking was only used during the final retouch phase (3), and a few points were also reworked by hard hammer percussion (phase 4). The Still Bay points from Blombos Cave represent some of the earliest evidence for pressure flaking, a technique more common in considerably more recent lithic techno-complexes. Experimental replication by Mourre et al. 2010 and microscopic study of Still Bay points from Blombos Cave indicate that some silcrete blanks were deliberately heat-treated, before pressure flaking was employed in the final reduction sequence, and thus improving the silcrete’s flaking quality.
  It has been argued that the bifacial points were hafted and used primarily as spear points or knives or both. Some researchers have  suggested that the seeming concern for the appearance of the finished point may represent evidence for social and stylistic elaboration during the MSA. Still Bay points may have served as tools with symbolic values attached to them – perhaps used as markers of identity – and integrated in social exchange networks, similar to the ones observed ethnographically. Högberg and Larsson 2011 hypothesise that blanks and unfinished Still Bay points were purposely left behind in Hollow Rock Shelter, perhaps for use at a later stage or as an act of solidarity with other hunter-gatherer groups.
caption: Lithic Industries of early Homo sapiens at Blombos Cave (M3 phase, MIS 5), Southern Cape, South Africa (c. 105 – 90 Ka)
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