Middle Stone Age

Butzer, K.W, Beaumont, PB. and Vogel, J.C. 1978 Lithostratigraphy of Border Cave a Middle Stone Age sequence heginning at c. 195,000 YTP. Journal of Archaeological Science 5 317-341. 

Singer, R. and Wymer, J. 1982 The Middle Stone Age at Klasies River Mouth in South Africa. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. 

Pointed tools, start of Middle Stone Age. Levalloisian technique of striking flakes from a lump of rock. 

About 8000 BCE, when the last ice age ended, the Middle Stone Age, or Mesolithic Age, began. People of this period are said to have tamed the dog and hollowed out logs to make crude boats. They also made the first pottery by sun baking clay, a chemical process that transforms loose, liquidy hydrated silicates into a strongly bonded network. Pottery appeared in Japan as early as 10,000 bce and in the Americas around 5000 bce. 

Watts (2002) Watts, I. Ochre in the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa Rituahsed display or hide preservative South African Archaeological Bulletin 57 175 (2002) 1-14 Weatherhead (2001) Weatherhead, F. Recording and conservation of painted plaster from the early excavations at Amama. Appendix Fresco technique on floor paintings from Amama Colour and Painting in Ancient Egypt Davies, VW. (ed.) The British Museum Press, London (2001) 58... 

Lyn Wadley, Two moments in time during middle stone age occupations of Sibudu, South Africa, Southern African Humanities 24 (2012) 79-97. 

People have long defined civilizations in terms of the materials societies have used to build and make objects. Historians often divide human history into periods such as the Old, Middle, and New Stones Ages the Bronze Age the Iron Age and, much later on in history, the Age of Plastics. 

Mankind was stiU in the Stone Age when, about 8000 B.C., a revolutionary change in food production was introduced in certain regions of what is now known as the Middle East. Previously, man had hunted food as any other animal might. Now he learned to domesticate animals and care for them as a reliable food supply. Even more important, he learned to cultivate plants. With animal husbandry and agriculture developed, a more stable and ample food supply was available, and the population increased. Agriculture required men to remain in one place, moreover, so that permanent habitations were built and cities developed. That evolution marks, literally, the beginning of civilization, for the word comes from the Latin term for city. ... 

B.c.E. Stone tools using the prepared-core technique Stone tools made by chipping away flakes from the stones from which they were made appear in the Middle Paleolithic age. 

Prehistoric Art n Painting and sculpture produced by artists of the Old, Middle, and New Stone ages. See Cave Painting. The earliest known piece of prehistoric sculpture is the famous Venus of Wfllendorf (Natural History Museum, Vienna), a small fertility image of Paleolithic origin dating around 11,000 bc. 

The principal dyes used by medieval dyers were indigo from woad for blue, alizarin and purpurin from madder for red, and luteolin from weld or cro-cetin from saffron for yellow some had been used long before the Middle Ages and weld was known in the Stone Age. Organic pigments have also been used on manuscripts, notably saffron, weld, indigo, woad, Tyrian purple, madder and carmine. 

Kobusiewicz M. (Ed.). (2008). Prehistory of Wielkopolska from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages. Wyd. Instytutu Archeologii i Etnologii PAN, ISBN 978-83-89499-50-9, Poznan (in Polish)... 

Castle Svihov Middle age Artificial stone Collagens... 

Alchemists in the early Middle Ages knew about some barium minerals. Smooth round pebble-like stones found in Bologna, Italy, were known as Bologna stones. When these odd stones were exposed to sunlight, or even a primitive reading lamp, they would continue to glow for several years. This characteristic made them attractive to witches as well as the alchemists. These stones are actually the mineral barite, barium sulfide (BaSO ), which today is a major source of barium metal. 

---