Alex Mackay
My primary interest is in explaining technological change in the late Pleistocene of southern Africa using insights from a variety of theoretical streams including evolutionary ecology, transmission theory and that roughly aligned body of work known as the organisation of technology. I'm also interested in how archaeologists approach archaeology, and thus in the history of archaeological research and in the effects that history has on how we perceive, approach and explain the changes we see in the record through time and space.
Currently I'm focusing on a three-year project looking at late Pleistocene occupational and technological variation in environmentally marginal regions of the Western Cape of South Africa.
Currently I'm focusing on a three-year project looking at late Pleistocene occupational and technological variation in environmentally marginal regions of the Western Cape of South Africa.
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Books
Contents:
1) Keeping your edge: recent approaches to the organisation of stone artefact technology (Ben Marwick and Alex Mackay);
2) Stone Artefact Technology in Willandra National Park: Reduction, Risk and Mobility (Patrick Faulkner);
3) Technology and technological change in eastern Australia, the example of Capertee 3 (Peter Hiscock and Val Attenbrow);
4) Standardisation and Design: The Tula Adze in Western New South Wales (Trudy Doelman and Simon Holdaway);
5) Scraper Reduction Continuums and Efficient Tool Use: Testing Hiscock and Attenbrow’s Model (Kate Connell and Chris Clarkson);
6) The Role of Reworking in New Zealand Adze Technology (Marianne Turner);
7) Rethinking the Naviform Method in the Southern Levant (Dawn Cropper);
8) ‘Bandkeramik' stone tool production and social network analysis: a case study (Christian Reepmeyer, Erich Classen, and Andreas Zimmermann);
9) Lithic evidence for changing land-use patterns in central Europe during the middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition (Ladislav Nejman);
10) New Insights into the Effects of Transport on Lithic Artifacts (Jennifer M. Ferris and William Andrefsky, Jr.);
11) Costs and benefits in technological decision making under variable conditions: examples from the late Pleistocene in southern Africa (Alex Mackay and Ben Marwick).
Papers
Contents:
1) Keeping your edge: recent approaches to the organisation of stone artefact technology (Ben Marwick and Alex Mackay);
2) Stone Artefact Technology in Willandra National Park: Reduction, Risk and Mobility (Patrick Faulkner);
3) Technology and technological change in eastern Australia, the example of Capertee 3 (Peter Hiscock and Val Attenbrow);
4) Standardisation and Design: The Tula Adze in Western New South Wales (Trudy Doelman and Simon Holdaway);
5) Scraper Reduction Continuums and Efficient Tool Use: Testing Hiscock and Attenbrow’s Model (Kate Connell and Chris Clarkson);
6) The Role of Reworking in New Zealand Adze Technology (Marianne Turner);
7) Rethinking the Naviform Method in the Southern Levant (Dawn Cropper);
8) ‘Bandkeramik' stone tool production and social network analysis: a case study (Christian Reepmeyer, Erich Classen, and Andreas Zimmermann);
9) Lithic evidence for changing land-use patterns in central Europe during the middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition (Ladislav Nejman);
10) New Insights into the Effects of Transport on Lithic Artifacts (Jennifer M. Ferris and William Andrefsky, Jr.);
11) Costs and benefits in technological decision making under variable conditions: examples from the late Pleistocene in southern Africa (Alex Mackay and Ben Marwick).
motifs and abstract designs. Here we explore the regional archaeological record using different components of lithic technological systems to track the transmission of cultural information and the extent of population interaction within and between different climatic regions. The data suggest a complex set of coalescent and fragmented relationships between populations in different climate regions through the late Pleistocene, with maximum interaction (coalescence) during MIS 4 and MIS 2, and fragmentation during MIS 5 and MIS 3.
Coalescent phases correlate with increases in the frequency of ornaments and other forms of symbolic expression, leading us to suggest that population interaction was a significant driver in their appearance.