International Research Fellowship Program: Pliocene Technology: Hominin Adaption and Tool Use in the Turkana Basin

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0602021BraunThe International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.This award will support a twelve-month research fellowship by Dr. David R. Braun to work with Dr. Mzalendo Kibunjia, at the National Museums of Kenya in Kenya, and with Michael Mangala at University of Nairobi. The origins of tool use among human ancestors reflects the complicated relationship between humans and the diverse environments they inhabit. Evidence that technological strategies are coupled with ecological resource structure would suggest that flaked stone technology contributed significantly to Pliocene (~2 million years ago) hominin adaptive strategies. Such technological decisions, as recorded in stone artifact morphology may represent a cultural system comprising complex strategies of resource use in a dynamic environment. This project is incorporating data from morphological analyses of artifacts and the geochemical provenance of these artifacts to answer two major questions in the origins of human tool manufacture and use: 1) Did the development and maintenance of a cultural solution to resource acquisition require significant energy expenditure? 2) How are technological strategies adapted to the landscape distribution of resources, especially raw material for stone tool manufacture? This research is using innovative new field techniques of capturing and analyzing geochemical and material science data about the different source of stone on the ancient landscape. This research is also investigating new methods of capturing the diverse morphology of early stone age artifacts. Dr. Mzalendo Kibunjia is the head of the Sites and Monuments Division of the National Museums of Kenya one of the leading institutions for prehistoric African Archaeology. Michael Mangala runs the Energy-Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence lab at the Institute of Nuclear Science at the University of Nairobi.