Across forests and savannas: Later Stone Age assemblages from Ituri and Semliki, Democratic Republic of Congo

This article characterizes Later Stone Age quartz industries from several s ites in the rain forests an woodland-savanna mosaics of the northeastern De mocratic Republic of Congo, with an emphasis on various reduction strategie s that include simple debitage, bipolar percussion, discoidal centripetal p ercussion, Modes 4 and 5, pebble tools, flaw propagation, and found tools. Comparisons between forest and woodland-savanna sites Establish strong simi larities among them over rime, determine deliberature cultural choices as t o raw material selection and overall reduction strategics, provide further evidence for an early inception of the Later Stone Age across tropical Afri ca, and show that ecologically distinct or highly specialized extractive te chnologies were not required to settle rainforests.