Fig 1.
Location of the sites mentioned in the text.
A: MSA sites in Africa (the map was made using QGIS software v.3.20 and using data from Natural Earth vector map data (https://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/)); B: MSA sites of Témara region, adapted from Ben Arous et al. (2020).
Fig 2.
A: Excavation map in 2015 [34]; B: view of the cave, outside (2005) and inside (2015) the cave.
Table 1.
Lithological description of El Mnasra.
Fig 3.
Aterian MSA lithic industries from US 9a.
a, b: tanged tools with a: retouched tanged point; b: retouched Levallois blade; c: Levallois micro-blade; d: Levallois micro-nucleus; scale: 1 cm (© R. Nespoulet).
Fig 4.
Material evidence of cultural/behaviour innovations and human remains found at El Mnasra cave.
Fig 5.
Location of OSL and combined US-ESR (altitudinal projection) samples analysed in this work.
This spatial representation is an altitudinal projection that can lead to a slight apparent offset of the sample locations and the US slops on the profile. The location of the teeth is also showing in the plan view. For the teeth EM0601, EM0603 and EM0604, the squares are indicated in purple.
Table 2.
US-ESR ages were calculated with γ-external reconstructs with gamma in situ dosimetry and with α-Al2O3:C dosimetry.
Table 3.
OSL results.
Fig 6.
OSL and US-ESR ages available for El Mnasra cave.
Errors are displayed at 1σ.
Fig 7.
Bayesian model results of the 30 ages (OSL, combined US-ESR age) used to constrain the age of the US obtained with Chronomodel v.2.0.18).
A: the Bayesian modelling independently considers OSL and US-ESR data; B: Bayesian modelling combines all data. Start and end ages have been estimated for each US and the curves of posterior densities are represented. All ages are shown in thousand years (ka) before present.
Table 4.
El Mnasra 95%- and 68%-time range intervals calculated with OSL data, US-ESR data and combining all the data.
Fig 8.
Synthesis of the Middle Stone Age from El Mnasra cave.
Time range intervals are indicated in front of each US (Lithostratigraphical log). Archaeological materials for each US are also indicated. Adapated from Stoetzel et al. (2014b).
Fig 9.
MSA chronological synthesis of Témara’s caves considering previous dates and new dates and time range intervals provided in this paper for El Mnasra cave.
Dates placed in the same vertical lines belong to the same stratigraphical unit or level.