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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Aron Mazel
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
The selection and acquisition of suitable raw material constitute the rst steps in stone tool technology. Previous ethnographical and archaeological research suggests that hominins in the Pleistocene primarily collected their stone materials while carrying out other activities. Direct provisioning for this pur- pose alone remains an outlier and is rarely demonstrated. Archaeological excavations coupled with multidisciplinary analyses at Jojosi in South Africa demonstrate that early modern humans undertook speci c, repeated visits to a raw material source over tens of thousands of years for the exclusive purpose of obtaining hornfels. This rare, strati ed, open-air locality features uniquely preserved lithic assemblages with abundant re ts dating from ~220 ka to ~110 ka for the reduction and export of a single tool stone. The scope of these knapping activities is underscored by millions of Middle Stone Age hornfels artefacts paving the modern landscape. The consistent, specialised procure- ment of a single raw material at Jojosi already during the Middle Pleistocene challenges the standard model of embedded procurement for this period. These ndings further show that key capacities of Homo sapiens, including increased long-term planning and behavioural plasticity in the interaction with the material world, emerged early in their evolutionary history.
Author(s): Will M, Sommer C, Möller G, Botha G, Blessing M, Msimanga L, Mazel A, Val A, Venditti F, Riedesel S
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Nature Communications
Year: 2026
Volume: 17
Online publication date: 07/04/2026
Acceptance date: 05/03/2026
Date deposited: 22/04/2026
ISSN (electronic): 2041-1723
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70783-8
Data Access Statement: The data generated in this study are provided in the main article and the Supplementary Information. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. All archaeological material of this study is permanently stored at the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in Pietermaritzburg, 237 Jabu Ndlovu St., South Africa, with access via the Principal Curator, Dr. Geoffrey Blundell (gblundell@nmsa.org.za). Source data are provided with this paper.
