Palaeolithic Occupation of Nigeria: New Evidence, Chronology, and Behavioural Implications

The Palaeolithic record of Nigeria remains one of the most poorly documented for any African country of comparable size, with only a handful of formally excavated sites providing reliable data and a near-total absence of absolute chronology for the earliest human occupations. This dissertation presents new evidence for Palaeolithic occupation of Nigeria, drawing on a directed prospection programme targeting geological contexts predicted by a landscape evolution model to preserve Pleistocene deposits, combined with new luminescence dating of key assemblage-bearing sediments. The prospection programme, conducted in four geological settings across northern and central Nigeria including river terrace sequences, deflated lag surfaces, and cave and rockshelter contexts, identified twenty-three new Palaeolithic localities, of which seven yielded material in primary or near-primary stratigraphic context. Lithic assemblages from these localities are analysed using attribute-based technological classification and refitting analysis to characterize reduction strategies and compare them with published assemblage descriptions from dated sites across West Africa. OSL and TL dating of associated sediments at four key sites provides the first rigorous absolute chronology for Palaeolithic occupation in Nigeria, placing the earliest identified occupation in the range of three hundred to two hundred thousand years before present, consistent with the chronological range of Middle Stone Age occupations documented elsewhere in West Africa. Behavioural implications of the assemblage characteristics are evaluated against current models of Middle Stone Age cognitive and social evolution, contributing new Nigerian data to the global debate about the African origins of modern human behaviour. Keywords: Palaeolithic, Middle Stone Age, Nigeria, chronology, luminescence dating.