Instrumentation for Landscape-Oriented Human Origins Research at Olduvai Gorge

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With National Science Foundation support Drs. Robert Blumenschine and Fidelis Masao will purchase a new four-wheel drive vehicle to supplement existing vehicles used by their large, multidisciplinary Olduvai research project field team. They will also acquire a mirror stereoscope for interpretation of large-scale color aerial photographs to be obtained in the course of 1996 research as well as a desktop mapping software and associated hardware for the production of high resolution topographic maps from digitized aerial photographs. For several years this team has conducted archaeological research at this site in northern Tanzania. This area has yielded important hominid fossils as well as paleontological and cultural remains and the goal of the research is to reconstruct the prehistoric landscape at just under 2 million years ago and determine how early hominids distributed their activities over it. The team has followed a distinct geological horizon in lower Bed II which represents a limited period of time and excavated small test units at carefully selected intervals both to determine variation in landscape and the pattern of hominid use of it. Because of the large size of the field team and the isolated and rough terrain dependable four wheel drive vehicles are necessary. Likewise an accurate map derived from aerial photographs will provide an essential basic research tool. The research itself is important because it will shed important light on how early hominids behaved and help to determine the factors which shaped development of this species. The work will also yield new approaches to landscape analysis and the resultant techniques will be applicable in many archaeological situations in many parts of the world.