NEWS Lithic Technological Approaches to the African Late Pleistocene Later Stone Age I n 1929, South African archeolo- gists J. Goodwin and C. van Riet Lowe 1 established the Later Stone Age (LSA) to differentiate southern African Holocene “cultures” such as “Wilton” from those of the late Pleistocene Middle Stone Age (MSA). The material culture of the LSA was then, and to some extent still is 2 characterized by ground and flaked stone “microlithic” tools and other artifacts synonymous with the ethnographically documented Bush- men. In the following decades, archeologists subsumed other sub- Saharan African industries, such as “Somaliland Wilton,” within the LSA, even though those industries had little if anything to do with the Bushmen and were not necessarily of Holocene age. 3,4 By the 1970s, radiocarbon dating demonstrated that some LSA sites were late Pleistocene in age. 5 To some archeologists, this suggested that the seemingly rapid technologi- cal changes between the MSA and the late Pleistocene LSA (LP LSA) could be equated with the evolution of Homo sapiens and the appear- ance of modern human behavior. 4,6 However, sub-Saharan African archeological research in the 1980s and 1990s showed that the MSA- LSA “transition” was much more complicated and asynchronous, as well as untethered to hominin turnover. African late Pleistocene research in the twenty-first century has further narrowed the temporal, technologi- cal, and definitional gaps between the MSA and LP LSA. This research has also shown greater lithic techno- logical variability within these major divisions. Consequently, archeolo- gists have questioned what the LSA actually represents and what its dis- tinguishing behavioral characteris- tics are. 7 WORKSHOP OVERVIEW To bring these issues into sharper focus, 36 archeologists from Africa, Europe, and North America (Table 1, Fig. 1) met in Johannesburg, South Africa, on July 12, 2014 to partici- pate in a workshop entitled “Lithic Technological Approaches to the African Late Pleistocene Later Stone Age.” Co-organized by Steven Brandt (Florida) and Justin Pargeter (Stony Brook and Johannesburg), the work- shop was sponsored by the Paleonto- logical Scientific Trust (PAST) and the Center for African Studies at the University of Florida. With eight lithic assemblages available for direct visual compari- sons (Fig. 1), most of the 15 presen- tations and debate centered around two major questions: How can we better define and distinguish LP LSA lithic technologies from those of the preceding MSA?; and how variable TABLE 1. Overview of Presenters and Discussants at the workshop, “Lithic Approaches to the African Late Pleistocene Later Stone Age” Name Site and Country/Region Role Map reference Paloma de la Pe~ na Sibudu Cave, South Africa Presenting collection 1 Marina Redondo Rose Cottage Cave, South Africa Presenting collection 2 Justin Pargeter Sehonghong, Lesotho Presenting collection 3 Alex Mackay Putslaagte 8, South Africa Presenting collection 4 Guillaume Porraz Bushman Rockshelter, South Africa Presenting collection 5 Britt Bousman Erfkroon, South Africa Presenting collection 6 G€ otz Ossendorf Apollo 11, Namibia Power Point presentation 7 Benoit Chevrier Fatandi V, Senegal Power Point presentation 8 Emanuele Cancellieri and Savino Di Lernia SW Libya, Central Sahara Power Point presentation 9 Els Cornelissen Tervuren collections, Shum Laka, Central Africa Presenting collections 10 Elena Garcea Jebel Gharbi, Northeastern Africa/Mediterranean Power Point presentation 11 Stan Ambrose Central Rift, Kenya Power Point presentation 12 Steve Brandt and Ralf Vogelslang Mochena Borago, Ethiopia Power Point presentation 13 Cl  ement M enard Bulbula River sites, Ethiopia Power Point presentation 14 Alice Leplongeon Porc-Epic and Goda Buticha, Ethiopia Power Point presentation 15 Alison Brooks Discussant Erella Hovers Discussant Lyn Wadley Discussant EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY 24:167–169 (2015)