Barriers and opportunities: reassessing the MIS 3 archaeology of southern Africa

Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3, spanning roughly 60–30 ka, was a period of climatic volatility and demographic change worldwide, yet in southern Africa its archaeology has remained comparatively overlooked. Building on Peter Mitchell’s 2008 call for renewed engagement with this period, this review considers how new dates, analyses, and approaches have begun to transform our understanding of MIS 3 occupation, at the end of the Middle Stone Age. Developments in radiocarbon and luminescence dating, re-excavation of legacy sites, and regionally focused studies are closing key chronological and spatial gaps, revealing a more complex picture of human settlement and behaviour. MIS 3—its climate, archaeology, and the research paradigms that surround it —is set into context by also considering the Howiesons Poort and Early Later Stone Age periods that frame it. A biome-scale synthesis highlights both progress and persisting gaps, offering an updated view of MIS 3 as a period of marked ecological and behavioural diversity within the subcontinent’s later Pleistocene prehistory.