Multi-scalar Analysis of a Southern African Assemblage: The Middle Stone Age at Ha Makotoko, Lesotho
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study describes a Middle Stone Age (MSA) assemblage from Ha Makotoko, Lesotho. Excavated in 2010, the assemblage dates to > 42 ka and falls within Marine Isotope Stage 3. Faunal remains indicate a grassland environment during the time of occupation. The lithic artefacts found at Ha Makotoko comprise a predominantly flake-based industry with some blades and an increasing frequency of bladelets throughout the sequence. Artefacts were primarily made on fine-grained materials and cores were mainly struck irregularly. The few tools present include points, and miscellaneously retouched pieces are common. Use-wear traces on points show direct evidence of hafting, with butchering and woodworking indicated. The MSA assemblage from Ha Makotoko is compared to material from the nearby sites of Ntloana Tšoana and Rose Cottage Cave, as well as sites further to the east in the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains and along South Africa's southeastern coast. These comparisons confirm its association with the post-Howiesons Poort technocomplex of Marine Isotope Stage 3 and reveal similarities to the final MSA. However, the high amount of informal retouch and other differences further complexify what is already considered a technologically highly variable period. Presenting this assemblage here adds additional evidence for a phase of the Middle Stone Age that remains poorly understood in its entirety. Situated along the intersection of Afroalpine and grassland environments in western Lesotho, Ha Makotoko offers a bridging record for these contrasting ecologies that highlights the diverse applicability of post-Howiesons Poort and final MSA toolkits. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41982-025-00238-x.
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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 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".