Geoarchaeological Contexts of Human Occupation During Lower Palaeolithic Eurasia: A Micromorphological Study of Sediments from 'Ubeidiya , Dmanisi and Gran Dolina-TD10

在国家科学基金会的支持下，研究生Carolina Mallol将进行她的论文研究的分析阶段，其中包括对三个不同的旧石器时代下部遗址的地质考古研究。作为这项研究的主要重点，土壤微形态技术(土壤/沉积物的微观分析)将被用于研究170万年前的德马尼西(乔治亚共和国)、140万年前的乌贝迪亚(以色列)和30万年前的阿塔普埃卡-TD10(西班牙)旧大陆的原始人职业的性质。这项工作的目标是确定诸如史前大火的残余物等人为遗迹，以高精度描述它们的特征，并将它们与可能是原始人在这些地点进行的活动联系起来。这项研究与上述每个遗址正在进行的考古项目相结合，体现了一种成功的多学科努力，因为来自动物考古学和岩屑技术等其他分学科的其他小组成员的现有分析结果被认为是对这项工作的补充。土壤微形态已成功地应用于几个史前遗址，揭示了现场观察和实验室分析之外的活动和解释的细节。在这类地质考古研究中，第一阶段涉及史前沉积是如何积累的以及在什么样的环境条件下，然后利用从被发现的遗骸中获得的数据从考古学的角度对其进行分析。这项技术可以实现的高度分辨率将有助于在早期原始人行为的背景下测试目前有争议的假说，例如使用火。从乌贝迪亚、德玛尼西和阿塔普埃卡获得的关于职业背景的确切性质的结论将为进一步解释早期人类行为提供坚实的背景。尤其重要的是，这三个主要考古遗址代表了欧亚大陆最早的原始人占领，其中包含有充分记录的石器、动物群和古人类学组合。第一批迁出非洲大陆的移民，欧亚大陆温带地区的殖民，以及人类史无前例的栖息地的定居，都是现象级事件，包括对所讨论的原始人种群的形态和行为影响。虽然古人类学和考古学可以向我们揭示这些事件的特征，但通过土壤微形态寻找肉眼无法看到的考古证据可以提供关于自然和人类背景的可靠信息。

With National Science Foundation support graduate student Carolina Mallol will conduct the analytic stage of her dissertation research, which comprises a geoarchaeological study of three different Lower Paleolithic sites. As the main focus of the research, the technique of soil micromorphology (the microscopic analysis of soils/sediments) will be applied to examine the nature of hominid occupations in the Old World at, Dmanisi (Republic of Georgia) 1.7 million years ago, and 'Ubeidiya (Israel) 1.4 million years ago, and Atapuerca-TD10 (Spain) 0.3 million years ago. The goal of this work is to identify anthropogenic remains such as the residues of prehistoric fires, to characterize them at a high level of accuracy and to associate them with activities that might have been performed by hominids at these sites. The research is integrated with the ongoing archaeological projects at each of the above-mentioned sites and exemplifies a form of successful multidisciplinary effort given that existing analytic results by other team members from other subdisciplines such as zooarchaeology and lithic technology are being considered complementary to this work. Soil micromorphology has been successfully applied to several prehistoric sites, revealing details of activities and interpretations that escaped field observation and laboratory analysis. In a geo-archaeological study of this kind, the first stage entails how the prehistoric deposits accumulated and under what kind of environmental conditions, followed by their analysis from an archaeological perspective using data available from the recovered remains. The high degree of resolution that can be accomplished by this technique will facilitate testing the currently debated hypotheses in the context of early hominid behavior, such as the use of fire. Conclusions obtained about the precise nature of the occupational contexts from 'Ubeidiya, Dmanisi and Atapuerca will represent a solid background on which to base further interpretations of early hominid behavior. Particularly significant is the fact that these three major archaeological sites represent the earliest hominid occupations of Eurasia containing well-documented lithic, faunal, and paleoanthropological assemblages. The first migrations out of the African continent, the colonization of temperate regions of Eurasia, and settlement in habitats where humankind was unprecedented, are phenomenal events that encompass morphological and behavioral implications for the hominid populations in question. While paleoanthropology and archaeology can reveal features of these events to us, search for archaeological evidence beyond the visibility of the naked eye, through soil micromorphology can provide reliable information concerning the natural and anthropogenic contexts.