Landscape Ecology and Hominid Land Use in the Lowermost Bed II Olduvai Basin

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With National science Foundation support, Dr. Robert Blumenschine and his colleagues will continue their archaeological research at Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania. Over the course of two seasons' of fieldwork, they will focus on a stratigraphic horizon which dates to just under 2 million years ago and which preserve traces of human activity. Dr. Blumenschine and colleagues will continue to sample this horizon through carefully controlled excavation and will collect both stone artifacts and faunal remains. Because it extends over a considerable horizontal distance, through comparison of samples, the team will be able to reconstruct a broad range of hominid (and likely non-hominid) activities, gain insight into geographically varied behavior, and place this in an environmental framework. To further the environmental aspect of the research, the team will collect sediment, paleosol and carbonate samples from the excavations for analyses of grain size, mineralogy, stable carbon and oxygen isotopes. Laboratory analyses of these geological samples will provide contextual information for interpreting archaeological patterning. Single crystal laser fusion argon-argon dating and trace element analyses will serve to establish finer temporal control within the target unit. This research is significant for two primary reasons. First it will shed new light on the emergence of human cultural capabilities. Olduvai Gorge has yielded not only important hominid fossil remains, but also numerous assemblages of stone tools and apparently associated fauna. These materials have provided a focus for examination of the cultural capacities of early hominids. Using data from the Olduvai sites paleoanthropologists have speculated on issues such as the role of meat in early hominid diet and questioned whether such peoples had the ability to hunt. Most of the available data comes from `sites` or dense, spacially clustered groups of stone and bone remains. Archaeologists however have come to realize that such clusters represent only one aspect of hominid behavior and that smaller less dense scatters and areas which have no material at all can also provide important relevant information. Dr. Blumenschine and colleagues will focus their attention in a systematic fashion on both the `clusters` and the scatter between the sites. Secondly, this work will help to pioneer the field of `landscape archaeology.` The team will develop techniques for the collection and analysis of non-site data and these methods will be applicable in a wide variety of archaeological situations. This work will provide insight into early hominid behavior. It will yield data of interest to many archaeologists and assist in the training of Tanzanian researchers. It will serve to strengthen the scientific ties between African and United States scientists.