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SCOPE The SapienCE team has exclusive access to sites that contain the keys for unlocking the past. The unique location of sites dated to between 120 ka and 50 ka on the southern Cape coast, South Africa, a region known to be particularly sensitive to regional and global climatic forces, makes them ideally placed for research into the marine and terrestrial environments utilised by H. sapiens. The inter-disciplinary research teams will carry out a macro- and micro-scale investigation of two new and three existing Middle Stone Age archaeological sites by looking in detail at the evidence, layer by layer, site by site. This will permit the unprecedented integration of securely-dated, high-resolution records of early human cultural, social, technological and subsistence behaviours with global, regional and site-based palaeoenvironmental information. This holistic approach will provide ground-breaking insight into the diverse aspects of what it means to be human.
