FAURESMITH INDUSTRY

a sub-Saharan African stone-tool industry dating from the early part of the upper Pleistocene, about 75,000 to 100,000 years ago. The Fauresmith industry is largely contemporaneous with the Sangoan industry (q.v.), also of sub-Saharan Africa. The two tool industries apparently corresponded to different habitats, however, Fauresmith having been used in open steppe areas and Sangoan in forested regions. These differences suggest that the two tool traditions may have been in use by two distinct cultural groups, a plains-dwelling people and forest-dwelling people. The Fauresmith industry, named for the town of Fauresmith, Free State province, South Africa, is characterized by small hand axes and cleavers and by numerous flake tools, including triangular projectile points of classic Levalloisian technique (see Levalloisian stone-flaking technique). The Fauresmith industry is associated with Saldanha man, attributed to Homo sapiens rhodesiensis.