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

已知的最早的解剖学上的现代人遗骸出现在非洲。这些遗骸与练习中石器时代(MSA)活动的人有关。对MSA人的研究最深入的是在南非的开普省，但在扎伊尔东部塞姆利基山谷的卡丹达地区也发现了遗骸。卡丹达遗址与鱼类遗骸有关，这表明水生资源可能比南非遗址明显更早地被使用。其中一个卡丹达遗址还发现了六个带刺的骨点，据估计，这些骨点可以追溯到距今约4万年前，这是已知的复杂骨骼技术的最早记录。这笔赠款将允许在最高产的加丹达遗址进一步挖掘与古土壤有关的遗骸。它还将允许沿着大约三公里的暴露范围测量和绘制古土壤地平线，以便将考古发现置于更广泛的区域背景中，并将能够使用剂量计和额外的样本来更准确地确定这些MSA地层层的年龄。该项目将扩大以前赞助的一处非常有前景的遗址的发掘工作，该遗址已经为中非石器时代的人民提供了新的线索。这项工作将有助于我们了解这一遗址的具体特征，也将有助于我们更全面地了解现代人的进化与新技术的发展以及新环境和食物来源的开发有关的过程。

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.