SINGA
LOCATION
Calcrete deposit within the “Gezira clay” exposed on
the west bank of the Blue Nile, some 46 krn down-
stream from the administrative post of Singa, eastern
Sudan, and 320 km S of Khartoum.
DISCOVERY
W. Bond, 1924.
MATERIAL
C alvaria.
DATING AND STRATIGRAPHIC CONTEXT
Fauna recovered at Singa and the apparently equiva-
lent site of Abu Hagar led Bate (1951) to infer an
early Late Pleistocene date for the two localities. Re-
cently two mammal teeth from Singa were dated by
ESR (Griin and Stringer, 1991), yielding average
dates of 97 Ka on the early uptake model and 160 Ka
by linear uptake. The large difference in these dates
led McDermott et al. (1996) to apply U-Th dating to
calcrete adherent to the cranium and thus younger or
at least no older than it. They express considerable
confidence in the resulting minimum date for the fos-
sil of 133? 2 Ka, which is corroborated by additional
linear-uptake ESR dates on mammal teeth.ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTFXT
Fairly abundant lithics came from both Singa and
Abu Hagar. Lacaille (1951) found that their closest
affinity lay with the Middle Stone Age Proto-Stillbay
industry. However, in refining the stratigraphy at
Singa, Ziegert (1981; quoted in Brauer, 1984) found
that the calvaria might even have been associated with
the final Acheulean.PREVIOUS DESCRIPTIONS AND ANALYSES
The calvaria was initially described by Woodward
(1938), who concluded that it was linked to the sup-
posedly proto-Bushman “Boskop” variety of Homo
sapiens known from southern Africa. Wells (1951) and
Briggs (1955) supported variants of this view. In
contrast, Anderson (1968) perceived resemblances to
Upper Paleolithic Europeans. Tobias (1968) discerned
archaic features in the front of the braincase, and
Brothwell (1974) similarly emphasized differences
from any extant African population, and pointed to
features in common with earlier hominids. Stringer
(1979) more specifically pointed to resemblances with
“late archaic Homo sapiens,” especially the Jebel Irhoud
1 specimen; and Stringer et al. (1985) further sup-
ported Brothwell’s (1974) suggestion that parietal
morphology might reflect a pathological condition.
Spoor et al. (1998) related this condition to the lack of
labyrinthine structures on the right side, possibly due
to an acoustic neuroma. In view of the Singa speci-
men’s early date, McDermott et al. (1996) expressed
the opinion that its “intriguing mixture of modern
and archaic characteristics... reflect an African popu-
lation which immediately preceded the emergence of
H. sapiens” (p. 515). Cranial capacity is estimated at
1550-1600 ml (Wells, 1951).258