Blue Highways: Evaluating Middle Stone Age Riverine-Based Foraging, Mobility, and Technology along the Trunk Tributaries of the Blue Nile

在国家科学基金会的支持下，约翰·卡佩尔曼博士和劳伦斯·托德博士以及一个由美国和埃塞俄比亚科学家和学生组成的团队将在埃塞俄比亚西北部进行为期三年的考古、古生物和地质研究。 通过一系列的控制挖掘，该项目评估的证据表明，中石器时代（MSA）的人类生活沿着上游的青尼罗河的支流上的低地斜坡埃塞俄比亚的西北高原适应了河流为基础的觅食生活方式，重点是开发高度可预测的和丰富的鱼类，软体动物和哺乳动物，季节性地集中在水坑周围在旱季。 一旦当地的食物耗尽，更长的距离觅食，沿着沿着通道到新的水坑作为一个旱季“泵”虹吸出MSA人口沿着河流。这些“蓝色高速公路”不仅提供了可预测的食物和淡水，而且从一个水坑到另一个水坑的流动也会影响人口沿着尼罗河走廊向北流动。 在这个从未研究过的地区调查考古遗址将增加对MSA行为的不断增长的知识。由于研究区域位于非洲之角，该地区被假设为现代人类可能起源的地方之一，并且位于尼罗河走廊内，这是一条潜在的迁移路线，这些新数据将进一步测试和完善现代人类起源和迁移的模型。 这些集中发掘的智力价值来自于它们与人类起源的具体问题的相关性，这些问题被整合到沉积学、地质年代学和古环境的更大研究中。总之，这些数据提供了重要的信息，这一研究计划，并更广泛的问题，非洲古生态学。 绝对测年的沉积序列将提供这些网站的年表，使岩屑组合和古生境重建可以与其他MSA网站。 主要目的是为了更好地了解这些MSA种群的古生态和古气候背景，更广泛的影响，研究将在几个方面。 首先，该项目汇集了来自美国和埃塞俄比亚的科学家和学生组成的研究伙伴关系，整合了各种学科，包括考古学，体质人类学，古生物学，古植物学，同位素地球化学，沉积学，地质年代学，以及基于社区的参与文化遗产管理和保护。其次，该项目强调国际学生教育，以发展跨学科研究的专业知识。它将开办一所野外学校，课程包括地理信息系统和全球定位系统、动物群识别、使用磨损、绘图和挖掘技术等方面的培训，并强调学生的研究。 第三，该项目包括与当地和区域社区开展教育外联活动，以促进利益攸关方参与长期的文化和自然遗产管理和保护。第四，该项目与在该地区工作的政府和私人发展团体合作，以确保文化遗产得到尊重，管理和保护。该项目将帮助培训新一代埃塞俄比亚遗产管理专家。

With National Science Foundation support, Drs. John Kappelman and Lawrence Todd and a team of US and Ethiopian scientists and students will conduct three years of archaeological, paleontological, and geological research in northwestern Ethiopia. Through a series of controlled excavations, the project evaluates evidence that Middle Stone Age (MSA) humans living along the upper reaches of the Blue Nile River's tributaries on the lowland slope of Ethiopia's northwestern plateau were adapted to a riverine-based foraging lifestyle focused on the exploitation of highly predictable and abundant fish, mollusks, and mammals that were seasonally concentrated around waterholes during the dry season. Once local foods were depleted, longer distance foraging forays along the channel to new waterholes functioned as a dry season "pump" to siphon MSA populations out along the rivers. Not only would these "blue highways" have provided predictable foods and fresh water, but movements from one waterhole to another would have effected population movements northward along the Nile corridor. Investigating archaeological sites in this never before studied region will add to the growing body of knowledge about MSA behaviors. Because the research area is located in the Horn of Africa, a region hypothesized to be one of the places where modern humans possibly originated, and within the Nile corridor, a potential migratory route, these new data will further test and refine models of modern human origins and migration. The intellectual merit of these focused excavations derives from their relevance to specific questions about human origins integrated within a larger study of the sedimentology, geochronology, and paleoenvironments. Taken together these data provide information of significance both to this research program, and to broader issues of African paleoecology. Absolute dating of the sedimentary sequences will provide a chronology for these sites so that the lithic assemblages and paleohabitat reconstructions can be compared with those from other MSA sites. The primary objective is to frame the paleoecological and paleoclimatic context of these MSA populations for a better understanding of their behavioral repertoire.Broader impacts of the study will be realized on several fronts. First, the project brings together a team of scientists and students from the US and Ethiopia in a research partnership that integrates a diverse set of disciplines including archaeology, physical anthropology, paleontology, paleobotany, isotope geochemistry, sedimentology, geochronology, and community-based involvement in cultural heritage management and preservation. Second, the project emphasizes international student education to develop expertise in transdisciplinary studies. It will conduct a field school with a curriculum that includes training in GIS and GPS, faunal identification, use-wear, and mapping and excavation techniques, and emphasize student research. Third, the project includes educational outreach with the local and regional communities to develop stakeholder engagement in long term cultural and natural heritage management and preservation. And fourth, the project partners with governmental and private development groups working in the area in order to ensure that the cultural heritage is respected, managed, and preserved. The project will help train a new generation of Ethiopian heritage management specialists.