Excavation of Middle Stone Age Occupation Horizons at the Katanda Sites, Semliki Valley, Zaire

扎伊尔塞姆利基山谷卡坦达遗址中石器时代占领地平线的发掘

• 批准号: 9014092
• 负责人: Alison Brooks
• 金额: $ 7.81万
• 依托单位: George Washington University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1990
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1990-07-01 至 1991-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9014092&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Excavation; Middle; Stone; Age; Occupation

The earliest known remains of anatomically modern humans occur in Africa. These remains are associated with people practicing Middle Stone Age (MSA) activities. The most intensive research on MSA peoples has been in the Cape Province of South Africa, but remains also have been uncovered in the Katanda area of the Semliki Valley in eastern Zaire. The Katanda sites are associated with fish remains, which suggest that aquatic resources may have been used much earlier than is evident at the South African sites. One of the Katanda sites also has yielded six barbed bone points, which are estimated to date from about 40,000 years before the present, the earliest known record of complex bone technology. This grant will permit further excavation of paleosol-related remains at the most productive of the Katanda sites. It also will permit surveying and mapping of the paleosol horizon along a roughly three kilometer exposure in order to place the archaeological findings in a broader regional context, and it will enable use of dosimeters and additional samples to determine more accurately the age of these MSA horizons. This project will expand on the work of previously sponsored excavations from a very promising site, which already has shed new light on Middle Stone Age peoples in central Africa. This work will contribute to our knowledge about the specific features of this site, and it also will contribute to our more general understandings of the processes by which evolution of modern humans was related to the development of new technologies and the exploitation of new environments and food sources.

已知最早的解剖学现代人类遗骸出现在非洲。 这些遗骸与从事​​中石器时代（MSA）活动的人们有关。 对 MSA 人群最深入的研究是在南非开普省，但在扎伊尔东部塞姆利基山谷的卡坦达地区也发现了遗骸。 卡坦达遗址与鱼类遗骸有关，这表明水生资源的使用可能比南非遗址早得多。 卡坦达 (Katanda) 遗址之一还出土了 6 个带刺的骨尖，估计距今约 40,000 年，这是已知的最早的复杂骨技术记录。 这笔赠款将允许在卡坦达生产力最高的遗址进一步挖掘与古土壤相关的遗迹。 它还将允许沿着大约三公里的曝光范围对古土壤层进行测量和绘图，以便将考古发现置于更广泛的区域背景中，并且它将能够使用剂量计和其他样本来更准确地确定这些 MSA 层的年龄。 该项目将扩展之前赞助的从一个非常有前途的地点进行的发掘工作，该地点已经为了解中部非洲的中石器时代人类提供了新的线索。 这项工作将有助于我们了解该遗址的具体特征，也将有助于我们更全面地了解现代人类的进化与新技术的发展以及新环境和食物来源的开发相关的过程。