Howiesons Poort
| The Middle Stone Age |
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| ↑ Early Stone Age |
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| ↓ Later Stone Age |
Howiesons Poort (also called HP) is a lithic technology cultural period in the Middle Stone Age in Africa named after the Howieson’s Poort Shelter archeological site near Grahamstown in South Africa. Research published in 2008 showed it lasted around 5,000 years between roughly 65,800 BP and 59,500 BP.
Humans of this period as in the earlier Stillbay cultural period showed signs of having used symbolism and having engaged in the cultural exchange of gifts.
Howiesons Poort culture is characterized by tools that seemingly anticipate many of the characteristics, 'Running ahead of time', of those found in the Upper Palaeolithic period that started 25,000 years later around 40,000 BP. Howiesons Poort culture has been described as “both ‘modern’ and ‘non-modern’”.
Modern research using optically stimulated luminescence dating has pushed back the date of its remains and it is now estimated to have started 64.8 ka and ended 59.5 ka with a duration of 5.3 ka. This date matches the oxygen isotope stage OIS4 which was a period aridity and sea level lowering in southern Africa.
In the South African Middle Stone Age sequence culture it occurs following a gap of 7 ka after the Stillbay period. The culture occurs in various sites around mainly South Africa but also Namibia and Zimbabwe.
Artifacts from it were first described in 1927 by Rev. P. Stapleton, a Jesuit schoolteacher at St Aidan's College and John Hewitt a zoologist and the director of the local Albany museum. The period name was given to their finds by AJH Goodwin and Clarence van Riet Lowe in 1929. After this and until the mid-1970s, Howieson’s Poort industry was taken to be a variety of Magosian and so intermediate in time and technology between the Middle Stone Age and Late Stone Age.
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