Early LGM environments accelerated the MSA/LSA transition in southern African highlands: the Robberg’s emergence at Melikane (Lesotho)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Melikane, a large sandstone rockshelter in the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains of highland Lesotho, preserves an 80,000 year-old archaeological sequence including two layers (4 & 5) dated to the onset of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), ~ 24 kcal BP. Paleoenvironmental proxies indicate that these layers were associated with increasing aridification and changes in resource distribution. An analysis of > 17,000 lithic artifacts combining attribute and morphometric approaches reveals that these environmental changes occurred alongside the adoption of Later Stone Age (LSA) Robberg bladelet technology at the site (Layer 4), which developed out of an early microlithic industry we classify as “incipient Robberg” (Layer 5). We argue that the accelerated implementation and standardization of bladelet technology in Layer 4 was the consequence of modifying and expanding existing technologies to function in a high-stakes LGM environment. While intrasite continuities and gradual changes in flaking systems at Melikane are inconsistent with the Robberg’s arrival via population replacement or migration (cf. Bousman and Brink, 2018), shared flaking systems with penecontemporary sites also implicate a role for cultural transmission in the Robberg’s development and demand an alternate explanation for its use in nonmarginal environments. We attribute its adoption in southern Africa more broadly to the extraordinary flexibility of bladelet technology and an ongoing cycle of connectivity and isolation throughout the LGM, encouraging the development of new flaking systems and their subsequent coalescence and diffusion.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".