A considerable number of ochre pieces show evidence of anthropogenic modification, including faceted surfaces with striations that indicate grinding for the production of powder. Ochre is a frequent archaeological find documented at numerous MSA sites in Africa. Within this framework, we try to answer the question of when and where habitual ochre use emerged and what significance this had for the development of ritual behavior during the MSA. Rather, this large-scale meta-analysis provides an understanding of the spatio-temporal patterning of ochre use from a long-term evolutionary perspective, that is to say, the longue durée. Our study is not predicated on a specific site, region or technocomplex, nor a specific hominin taxon. Here we present a meta-analysis of ochre use on the African continent, beginning with the first occurrences of ochre associated with transitional industries dated to the end of the Early Stone Age (ESA) and follow the trend throughout the subsequent MSA. However, our knowledge about the broad spatio-temporal patterning of ochre use during the MSA remains limited. Ochre plays an important role in contemporary theoretical discussions about the emergence of modern human behavior (d’Errico & Stringer, 2011 Henshilwood & Dubreuil, 2011 Henshilwood & Marean, 2003 McBrearty & Brooks, 2000 Nowell, 2010 Pettitt, 2011b Sterelny, 2011 Watts, 2015). It can also be found in the form of powder in discrete features or as a residue adhering to stone artifacts, bones, shells and rocks (d’Errico et al., 2009 Henshilwood et al., 2001b Rosso et al., 2016 Wadley, 2010b). At archaeological sites attributed to the Middle Stone Age (MSA) of Africa, ochre is typically found as red, yellow or brown-colored lumps or nodules. More recently, some researchers have expanded the term to include rocks containing hydrated iron oxides such as goethite (FeO(OH)), which produce yellowish and brownish colors (Henshilwood et al., 2009 Hodgskiss, 2012 Wadley, 2010a). Ochre is a generic term used by archaeologists to describe earth pigments, usually of reddish color, containing different geochemical elements including iron oxides, such as hematite (Fe 2O 3). We discuss the implications of our findings on two models of ritual evolution, the Female Cosmetic Coalitions Hypothesis and the Ecological Stress Hypothesis, as well as a model about the emergence of complex cultural capacities, the Eight-Grade Model for the Evolution and Expansion of Cultural Capacities. Such ritual behavior may have facilitated the demographic expansion of early modern humans, first within and eventually beyond the African continent. We argue that this pattern is a likely material manifestation of intensifying ritual activity in early populations of Homo sapiens. We determine that ochre use established itself as a habitual cultural practice in southern, eastern and northern Africa starting about 160,000 years ago, when a third of archaeological sites contain ochre. While the geographical distribution expanded with time, the absolute number of ochre finds grew significantly as well, underlining the intensification of ochre use. More importantly, the ratio of sites with ochre compared to those with only stone artifacts also followed this trend, indicating the increasing intensity of ochre use during the Middle Stone Age. The number of sites with ochre increased with each subsequent phase. Using methods based on time averaging, we identified three distinct phases of ochre use: the initial phase occurred from 500,000 to 330,000 the emergent phase from 330,000 to 160,000 and the habitual phase from 160,000 to 40,000 years ago. We report the most comprehensive meta-analysis of ochre use to date, spanning Africa between 500 and 40 thousand years ago, to examine data from more than a hundred archaeological sites. Here we take a continent-wide approach, rather than focusing on specific sites, regions or technocomplexes. Given the importance of ochre for the scholarly debate about the emergence of ‘behavioral modernity’, the lack of long-term spatio-temporal analyses spanning large geographical areas represents a significant gap in knowledge. ![]() Over the last two decades, red ochre has played a pivotal role in discussions about the cognitive and cultural evolution of early modern humans during the African Middle Stone Age.
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