The Mumba Rockshelter is located in the Rift Valley of Tanzania, about 62 kilometers (38 miles) south of Olduvai Gorge, on the southeastern side of Lake Eyasi. Excavated first in the 1930s by Ludwig and Margit Köhl-Larsen, the site's deposits includes about nine meters (30 feet) of debris and artifacts from nearly continuous human occupation beginning more than 64,000 years ago and continuing to 1,600 years ago. Cultural components in evidence at the site include the Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age as well as the Iron Age in Africa.
Mumba's cave opening is at ~1,050 m above mean sea level (~3450 ft); the cave is at the base of a massive outcrop of Precambrian diorite and gneiss. The overhang is shallow, and in fact barely noticable from the ground surface.
Chronology at Mumba
Stratigraphy and chronology of Mumba cave has been debated over the years: the following table is derived from Gliganic 2012, and reports optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dates on quartz and feldspar.
- Geological Unit A, Beds I-II, sterile debris
- Geologicals Unit B and C, Bed III, Later Stone Age
- * Bed III upper, 1600-12,000 BP
- * Bed III middle, 15,600 BP
- * Bed III lower, Nasera industry, 36,800
- Geological Unit D, Bed IV, sterile, 29,400-43,000 BP
- Geological Unit E and F, Bed V, Mumba industry, transitional Middle to Later Stone Age or Later Stone Age
- * Bed V upper, Mumba industry, 49,100 BP
- * Bed V middle, Mumba industry, 51,300 BP
- * Bed V lower, Mumba industry, 56,900 BP
- Geological Unit G, Bed VIA, Kisele industry, Middle Stone Age, 63,400 BP
- Geological Unit H, Bed VIB, Sanzako industry, Middle Stone Age
Bed V at Mumba Rockshelter was considered by scholars writing in the 1980s such as Mehlman to represent a transitional Middle Stone Age to Later Stone Age, including include retouched Levallois flakes, and geometric microliths and knives. However, later scholars writing in the 21st century such as Prendergast and Diez Martín believed the entire sequence was Later Stone Age in quality. The later scholars found retouched freehand technology dominated in the lower and middle Bed V units, and the geometric microliths and knives in the upper.
OSL dating reported in 2012 (both Gliganic reports) indicates that both MSA and LSA are apparent in the deposits, and that indeed Mumba represents a rare opportunity to trace cultural evolution of MSA to LSA. Microliths, an MSA trait, appear first about 60,000 years ago; and ostrich eggshell beads, an LSA trait at ~49,000 years ago. This dating of the LSA makes Mumba the earliest appearance the LSA traits in Africa to date.
Features and Artifacts
The MSA technique of stone tool production called bipolar reduction was first documented at Mumba in the 1930s: the Kohl-Larsens used seriation of cores to show a gradual, consistent increase from Bed VI to V to III. Prendergast refined the Kohl-Larsen analysis with an unbiased lithic sample from Bed V, but also found evidence for the increase in use of the bipolar technique through the sequence. Eren and colleagues (2013) argue that the increase in bipolar reduction may be related to a number of behavioral and climatic changes during the MSA.
Ten burials were found within the cave deposits, all of which are derived from a Later Stone Age occupation. Three human molars were recovered from the MSA levels, and have been identified at least tentatively as representing Early Modern Humans. Animals accounted for in Bed V include zebra, warthog, greater kudu, buffalo and tortoise, among many others.
Archaeology
Mumba was first excavated by the Köhl-Larsens between 1934 and 1938; and again by MV Mehlman in 1979 and 1981. New excavations were conducted by Dominguez-Rodrigo and Mabulla in 2005; the stratigraphy was reassessed in by Prendergast et al. in 2007.
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the About.com guide to the Middle Paleolithic, and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Bräuer G. 1980. Human skeletal remains from Mumba Rock Shelter, Northern Tanzania. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 52(1):71-84.
Eren MI, Diez-Martin F, and Dominguez-Rodrigo M. 2013. An empirical test of the relative frequency of bipolar reduction in Beds VI, V, and III at Mumba Rockshelter, Tanzania: implications for the East African Middle to Late Stone Age transition. Journal of Archaeological Science 40(1):248-256.
Gliganic L, Jacobs Z, and Roberts R. 2012. Luminescence characteristics and dose distributions for quartz and feldspar grains from Mumba rockshelter, Tanzania. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 4(2):115-135.
Gliganic LA, Jacobs Z, Roberts RG, Domínguez-Rodrigo M, and Mabulla AZP. 2012. New ages for Middle and Later Stone Age deposits at Mumba rockshelter, Tanzania: Optically stimulated luminescence dating of quartz and feldspar grains. Journal of Human Evolution 62(4):533-547.
Mehlman MJ. 1979. Mumba-Hohle Revisited: The Relevance of a Forgotten Excavation to Some Current Issues in East African Prehistory. World Archaeology 11(1):80-94.
