Presented in person and online, details below.

Fossil and artefactual evidence shows Homo sapiens in Eurasia well before 75 ka.  However, genetic evidence suggests all extant non-African populations derive almost all of their ancestry from a dispersal that only diverged in the last 60-50 ka.  In northern Eurasia, the Upper Palaeolithic with its laminar blade knapping provides an archaeological signature of this dispersal, but no equivalent is yet established for southern Asia, Wallacea, and Sahul.  This paper suggests that lithic miniaturization may provide such a signature as it appears across these southern regions from around 50 ka.  It can be traced back to the southwestern-most corner of Asia at 55 ka, and then coastal east Africa at 68 ka.  In both these cases it is also associated with laminar blade technology.  Lithic miniaturization is implicated in behaviours including bow-and-arrow hunting, compound tools, hair-shaving, and scarification.  The ecological and social implications of these behaviours may have given later Homo sapiens a competitive advantage over both other hominins and earlier dispersals of our own species. 

Speaker bio:
Dr Ceri Shipton is a lithic technology research fellow at the Australian National University.  He has conducted excavations at Late Pleistocene archaeological sites in east Africa, Arabia, India, Wallacea, and Australia. 

Zoom details :https://anu.zoom.us/j/83676628890?pwd=A1IBLli8x0yuaR4ZA1hZOvSzWWFbNC.1
Meeting ID: 836 7662 8890
Password: 529408