Smithfield

A Later Stone Age industry and hunting and gathering culture of southern Africa, originally thought contemporary with the Wilton, but technologically different from it, and now referring to a complex between 1300-1700 AD. The culture was on the same level as that of the Mesolithic people of Europe or the modern Kalahari bushmen. The unifying feature of this industry was the almost complete absence of backed microliths and tiny semicircular scrapers.

In early writings on the later stone industries of South Africa, particularly those prepared before the development of radiocarbon dating techniques, reference was frequently made to a group of ‘Smithfield’ industries, named after a town in the Orange Free State. The unifying feature of these industries, which served to distinguish them from those of the apparently broadly contemporary Wilton, was the almost complete absence of backed microliths and tiny semicircular scrapers. Further research, coupled with the obtaining of radiocarbon dates, now shows that the old ‘Smithfield’ concept linked several probably unrelated industries, including that now named Albany, several occurrences in the arid interior regions of South Africa, and others dating to the last two millennia on the Cape and Natal coasts.