What is Still Bay? Human behavioural variability and biogeography reflected in Southern African Middle Stone Age bifacial points

The Still Bay is a cultural-historic phase within the southern African Middle Stone Age, which remains critical to our understanding of modern human behavioural evolution, as well as to our understanding of the biogeographic spread of different early modern human groups across the southern African sub-continent. However this phase is recognised in the archaeological record solely through the documentation of bifacial stone points (artefacts) that have a specific and complex overall morphology. Variability within this phase, and the accuracy with which the limits of it can be identified in time and in space, has received relatively little to no attention. The purpose of my thesis was to develop an objective and reliable method for identifying and interpreting morphological variability in bifacial points from the key Still Bay assemblages, and further, to test patterns documented with this method against conventional understandings of the phase. The broader central findings suggest that Still Bay point morphology varies significantly but uniformly through time, and discretely across space between bifacial point regional groupings. Therefore, treatment of the Still Bay as a culturally homogeneous entity and marker of demographic affiliation may be unreliable in a broader regional context.