DDIG: Analysis of Faunal Remains from the Middle Pleistocene Site of Orgnac 3, France

在Richard Klein博士的指导下，Jason Lewis将分析法国Orgnac 3洞穴遗址考古发掘的动物遗骸。该遗址可追溯到约350,000至约29万年前，发现了非常大的石器和动物骨骼组合，以及7颗人类牙齿化石。在其沉积历史的一部分，Orgnac 3是一个洞穴，而在另一段历史上，它是一个沉坑。该遗址保存了中更新世长时间段内短时间段的大样本。它包含烧焦的骨头的木炭/煤烟透镜，被解释为壁炉和堆积的人工制品和骨骼，周围环绕着可能代表居住结构基础的天然岩石。由于这些原因，Orgnac 3的材料有助于回答许多关于中更新世中晚期人类古生态的问题。古人类学的大部分工作集中在人类古生态的一个特殊方面，即生存策略。人们何时开始获取肉类和其他动物组织，无论是通过拾取还是狩猎，以及人类的生存策略随着时间的推移发生了怎样的变化，仍然是激烈辩论的话题。不同的人类种群如何以不同的方式觅食，以及这些差异在进化上的重要性，是考古学和古生物学记录中需要提出的重要问题。考虑到中更新世和晚更新世，这一点尤其正确，当时不同的人类物种生活在不同的大陆上，但到更新世结束时，只剩下一个物种：智人。为了达到了解整个人类历史上生存策略变化的最终目标，我们必须首先对一个样本动物群如何经历原始人活动或自然过程可能改变其组成的几个阶段进行强有力的、科学的重建。该项目采用这样的整体方法来记录Orgnac 3号人类居民的身体获取和处理行为，并研究这些行为在整个人类物种进化过程中是如何变化的。一旦Orgnac 3人的身体获取和处理行为被表征，这些可以与欧洲和非洲的其他中更新世遗址进行比较，以阐明这些行为是如何随着时间和空间发生变化的。除了史前考古学家感兴趣的研究问题，该项目将产生更广泛的影响，为研究生培训提供帮助，并加强美国和法国机构之间的合作关系，特别是斯坦福大学和Tautavel的Européen de Recherches Préhiorique和巴黎的巴黎PaléOntologie Humaine研究所之间的合作关系。这项工作将提高人们对法国最古老和最大的人类化石遗址之一的认识。此外，这里产生的原始数据将提供给欧洲历史研究中心，供它们在自己的研究、馆藏规划和教学发展中使用(在其教育材料和毗邻的欧洲历史研究中心)。

Under the supervision of Dr. Richard Klein, Jason Lewis will analyze faunal remains from archaeological excavations of the French cave site of Orgnac 3. This site, dating from between ~350,000to ~290 000 years ago, has yielded very large stone artifact and animal bone assemblages and seven fossil human teeth. For part of its depositional history, Orgnac 3 was a cave, and for another, it was a sink-hole. The site preserves large samples from short time periods within the long Middle Pleistocene interval. It contains charcoal/sooty lenses with burnt bones that have been interpreted as hearths and accumulations of artifacts and bones surrounded by natural rocks that may represent the bases of dwelling structures. For these reasons the Orgnac 3 materials lend themselves to answering many questions about human paleoecology during the middle and late Middle Pleistocene.Much work in paleoanthropology has focused on one particular aspect of human paleoecology, that of subsistence strategy. When people started acquiring meat and other animal tissues, whether through scavenging or hunting, and how human subsistence strategies have changed over time, remain hotly debated topics. How different human populations might have foraged differently, and the evolutionary import of those differences, are important questions to ask of the archaeological and paleontological records. This is especially true when considering the Middle and Late Pleistocene, when different human species lived on different continents, but by the end of the Pleistocene, only one species remained: Homo sapiens. To reach the ultimate goal of understanding changes in subsistence strategy throughout human history, one must begin with a robust, scientific reconstruction of how a sample faunal assemblage passed through several stages in which hominid activity or natural processes could have altered its composition. This project adopts such a holistic approach to document the carcass acquisition and processing behaviors of the human inhabitants of Orgnac 3 and to examine how these behaviors have changed throughout the evolution of the human species. Once the carcass acquisition and processing behaviors of the Orgnac 3 people have been characterized, these can be compared to other Middle Pleistocene sites in Europe and Africa in order to elucidate how these behaviors have changed through time and across space.Beyond research questions of interest to prehistoric archaeologists, this project will have a broader impact by providing assistance in graduate student training and strengthening collaborative relationships between institutions in US and France, specifically those between Stanford University and the Centre Européen de Recherches Préhistoriques in Tautavel and Institut de Paléontologie Humaine in Paris. This work will increase awareness of one of the oldest and largest fossil human sites in France. Furthermore, the primary data generated here will be made available to the Centre Européen de Recherches Préhistoiriques, for them to use in their own research, curation planning, and pedagogical development (in their educational materials and in the adjoining Centre Européen de Préhistoire ).