Nimal Perera

Postgraduate Institute of Archaeology · University of Kelaniya , Sri Lanka

Over the last three decades, Sri Lanka has risen to international prominence as a key area for exploring past forager adaptations. Much of this discussion has focused on the lowland rainforests of the Wet Zone of the island, and their preservation of the earliest fossils of our species, bone tools, and microlithic technologies in the region ca. 45,...

Few human burials from Sri Lankan archaeological contexts have been described. Here we report on the analysis of two early Holocene skeletons, FH8, a young adult female skeleton excavated from Fa Hien-lena and dated to 10,640-10,139 cal BP, and BK1, a middle adult male skeleton excavated at Kuragala and dated to 7,170-6,950 cal BP. The skeletons ar...

The Galle Fort, a World Heritage site located on a peninsula jutting out of the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka was first fortified on the land front by the Portuguese in the 1500s. The Dutch captured it in 1640 and built extensive fortifications upon existing ramparts, bastions and on the sea fronts, making it one of the largest Dutch Forts in Sou...

Archaeologists contend that it was our aptitude for symbolic, technological, and social behaviors that was central to Homo sapiens rapidly expanding across the majority of Earth’s continents during the Late Pleistocene. This expansion included movement into extreme environments and appears to have resulted in the displacement of numerous archaic hu...

Microliths–small, retouched, often-backed stone tools–are often interpreted to be the product of composite tools, including projectile weapons, and efficient hunting strategies by modern humans. In Europe and Africa these lithic toolkits are linked to hunting of medium- and large-sized game found in grassland or woodland settings, or as adaptations...

Defining the distinctive capacities of Homo sapiens relative to other hominins is a major focus for human evolutionary studies. It has been argued that the procurement of small, difficult-to-catch, agile prey is a hallmark of complex behavior unique to our species; however, most research in this regard has been limited to the last 20,000 years in E...

The site of Batadomba-lena in the Wet Zone of Sri Lanka, yields osseous technologies in association with Homo sapiens back to c.36,000 cal years BP. Alongside isolated finds from the nearby site of Fa Hien-lena, these bone tools are the earliest of their kind in South Asia and can contribute to discussions of the adaptive context of osseous technol...

Human occupation of tropical rainforest habitats is thought to be a mainly Holocene phenomenon. Although archaeological and paleoenvironmental data have hinted at pre-Holocene rainforest foraging, earlier human reliance on rainforest resources has not been shown directly. We applied stable carbon and oxygen isotope analysis to human and faunal toot...

Several shell middens of coastal Sri Lanka indicate human occupation in the mid-Holocene and are recognized as being of prime importance in the archaeological narrative of the island. A salvage archaeology operation conducted at the Mini-athiliya shell midden in the Southern Province of Sri Lanka, yielded ancient human remains associated with stone...

Here we conduct the first direct metric examination of two early regional manifestations of microlithic industries – the Howiesons Poort of southern Africa (c. 65–60 ka) and the Microlithic industry of South Asia (c. 38–12 ka). Inter-regional comparative analysis of microlithic industries is rare, but can contribute much to our understanding of tec...

Batadomba-lena, a rockshelter in the rainforest of southwestern Sri Lanka, has yielded some of the earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in South Asia. H. sapiens foragers were present at Batadomba-lena from ca. 36,000 cal BP to the terminal Pleistocene and Holocene. Human occupation was sporadic before the global Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Batadomba-...

Sri Lanka is a tropical island that lies approximately halfway between Africa and Australia along the northern rim of the Indian Ocean, and has one of the best recorded prehistoric sequences in South Asia. A review of its prehistory is a vast subject. The present study investigates the island's hunter-gatherer archaeology between the Late Pleistoce...

Kitulgala Beli-lena, a rockshelter in gneiss in humid tropical southwestern Sri Lanka, was inhabited by Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene (>31,000–7880 B.P.) hunter-gatherers who made geometric microliths and exploited rainforest resources. Micromorphological analysis of a ca. 3-m-thick succession of diamictic loams, clays, and breccia with cultural...

The streamside site of Bellan-bandi Pallassa, with the richest skeletal record of terminal Pleistocene-early Holocene hunter-gatherers on the island, is one of the most important prehistoric sites in Sri Lanka. We use thin section micromorphology of two samples from terminal Pleistocene (ca. 11,150-12,250 years BP) levels to infer processes of sedi...