Field Research in the Middle Awash Valley, Ethiopia

这项研究涉及在埃塞俄比亚的阿法尔萧条地区进行的古人类学田野调查。中阿瓦什研究项目是一项多学科的国际努力，旨在帮助阐明过去600万年来人类祖先和近亲的起源和进化。该研究项目优先将考古和古生物发现置于准确的时间-地层和古环境背景下。中阿瓦什是非洲裂谷系统中构造活跃的一部分。该研究区提供了受构造作用和剥蚀作用暴露的沉积物的拼接，并由互层火山层标定。这套独特的地质环境使该项目能够同时探索不同的时间范围，并生成与人类起源和进化的不同方面有关的数据。该研究区域发现了跨越500万年的类人猿化石；这一记录比地球上其他任何地方都要长。这里已经发现了三个原始人属的六个物种，代表了旧石器时代技术发展的每一个阶段。该项目的野外调查大致可以分为三个阶段，每个主要的化石沉积包。首先，探索确定并约束包。地质学家试图将它与其他地点按时间顺序联系起来，并与从邻近亚丁湾海底采集的当代海洋沉积物岩芯中嵌入的全球气候变化记录联系起来。接下来，有重点的研究建立了每个沉积物包内的内容物和年代地层关系，以岩石样本、化石和文物的形式产生了许多原始数据。最后，随着侵蚀和挖掘的继续，对每个主要暴露的沉积包进行长期管理，可以恢复更多的化石和文物。目前提议资助的研究将是研究区域总体探索的最后阶段。重点研究对象是约5.2百万年、约2.5百万年和100万年前关键时期的沉积包裹体。对邻近已被证实的地区的管理将提供额外的数据。

The research involves paleoanthropological fieldwork conducted in Ethiopia's Afar Depression. The Middle Awash research project is a multidisciplinary, international effort to help illuminate the origin and evolution of human ancestors and close relatives during the past six million years. The research project gives priority to placing archaeological and paleontological discoveries within accurate time-stratigraphic and paleoenvironmental contexts. The Middle Awash is a tectonically active segment of the African rift system. This study area offers a patchwork of sediments exposed by tectonic action and erosion, and calibrated by interbedded volcanic horizons. This unique set of geological circumstances allows the project to simultaneously explore different time horizons, and to generate data bearing on different aspects of human origins and evolution. The study area has yielded fossil hominoid remains spanning five million years; a longer record than is available anywhere else on earth. Six species in three hominid genera have already been discovered here, and every stage of paleolithic technological development is represented. The project's field investigations can be loosely divided into three stages for each major fossiliferous sedimentary package. First, exploration identifies and constrains the package. Geologists attempt to link it chronologically with other sites, and with the record of global climatic change embedded in cores of contemporary marine sediment taken from the floor of the adjacent Gulf of Aden. Next, focused research establishes the contents and chronostratigraphic relationships within each sediment package, generating much primary data in the form of rock samples, fossils, and artifacts. Finally, long-term management of each major exposed sedimentary package allows additional fossil and artifact recovery as erosion and excavation continue. Research funded by the current proposal will represent the final stage of overall exploration in the study area. Focused research is targeted on sedimentary packages in the critical c. 5.2 myr, c. 2.5 myr, and 1.0 million-year-old periods. Management of adjacent, already proven localities will provide additional data.