South Africa boasts an exceptionally long history of Stone Age research, and its Middle Stone Age (MSA) record has attracted enhanced research interest in recent decades, following advances in dating techniques. Within the country's MSA, the Late Pleistocene part, sampled by numerous sites that chart the development and proliferation of innovative technologies and complex behaviors, particularly stands out as one of the most comprehensively studied and relatively complete archaeological records on the continent. By contrast, its early MSA record lacks the clear patterns of transition from the preceding Acheulean period as well as fossils of early Homo sapiens currently better documented elsewhere in Africa.