Nature News has an article written by Jeff Tollefson, which profiles archaeologist Chris Henshilwood and his work at Blombos, South Africa: “Human evolution: Cultural roots”.

Most fascinating line, regarding his early exploration at Blombos:

The Middle Stone Age was not part of his thesis, so Henshilwood covered the site up and moved on.

That’s sadly symptomatic of archaeological funding.

Henshilwood has made a great career out of the MSA since then, as the article details. Now lots of money is flowing into interdisciplinary research trying to tie African MSA to paleoclimate. The article details some of those developments also.