Dissertation Research: The Effects of Raw Material and Land Use Patterns of Lithic Assemblage Variability in the Acheulean at Olorgesailie, Kenya

在Stanley Ambrose博士的指导下，Michael Noll先生将为他的博士论文收集数据。他将分析从位于肯尼亚南部裂谷的Olorgesailie考古遗址中发现的石器。该网站跨越了一个时期，从CA。90万到60万年前的考古材料和大型和良好的挖掘样本是直立人阿舍利文化的代表。Glynn Isaac博士是第一位在Olorgesailie进行系统研究的考古学家，他指出，从遗址不同区域恢复的组合彼此之间存在显着差异，但它们在空间或时间上都没有显示出模式化的变化。这种变化似乎是随机的，没有明显的原因，因此反映了现代人类不具备的思维模式。诺尔先生将重新评估这一假设。他和艾萨克博士一样指出，石器是由各种各样的原材料制成的，有些比其他的更容易剥落，他相信随着时间的推移，这些材料的可用性和石头本身的物理限制可能会改变，在很大程度上解释观察到的变化。为了开展这项工作，Noll先生将首先确定原材料场地的位置，并确定这些场地地质暴露的时间间隔。然后，他将进行一系列剥落实验和工程分析，以阐明剥落特性。他特别希望了解，某些类型的材料是否比其他材料更容易制成工具。最后，他将研究考古组合，并试图解释观察到的变化，根据这些因素。 考古学家希望了解原始人类的行为是如何随着时间的推移而变化和发展的。虽然许多阿舍利时期的遗址已经被挖掘出来，而且很明显，这些人的行为与现代人不同，但事实证明，很难深入了解他们的思想过程。由于阿舍利石在旧大陆广泛分布，它们为这样的研究提供了最好的数据来源，诺尔先生开发了一种有望实现这一目标的技术。他的工作成果将引起许多人类学家的兴趣。该项目还将协助培训一名有前途的青年科学家。

Under the direction of Dr. Stanley Ambrose, Mr. Michael Noll will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. He will analyze stone tools recovered from the archaeological site of Olorgesailie which is located in the southern Kenya Rift Valley. The site spans a period of from ca. 900,000 to 600,000 years ago and the large and well excavated samples of archaeological materials are representative of the Acheulean culture of Homo erectus. Dr. Glynn Isaac, the first archaeologist to conduct systematic research at Olorgesailie noted that that the assemblages recovered from different areas of the site varied significantly from each other but that they displayed no patterned change over either space or time. The variation seemed to be random with no discernible cause and reflected, therefore, patterns of thought uncharacteristic of modern humans. Mr. Noll will re-evaluate this hypothesis. He notes, as did Dr. Isaac, that the stone tools are fashioned from a wide variety of raw materials, some more amenable to flaking than others and he believes that changing availability of these materials over time and the physical constraints of the stones themselves may, to a large extent, explain the variation observed. To conduct this work, Mr. Noll will first locate raw material sites and determine the time intervals when they were geologically exposed. He will then conduct a series of flaking experiments and engineering analyses to elucidate flaking properties. In particular he wishes to learn whether some types of materials are more easily fashioned into tools than others. Finally he will examine the archaeological assemblages and attempt to explain observed variation in light of these factors. Archaeologists wish to understand how hominid behavior changed and developed over time. While many Acheulean period sites have been excavated, and while it is evident that these people acted differently than their modern day counterparts, it has proven very difficult to gain insight into their thought processes. Because Acheulean lithics are widespread across the Old World, they provide the best source of data for such a study and Mr. Noll has developed a technique which hopefully will accomplish this goal. The results of his work will be of interest to many anthropologists. The project will also assist in training a promising young scientist.