Collaborative Research: Acheulean Hominin Behavior at Elandsfontein, South Africa

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With support from the National Science Foundation, Drs. David Braun and Naomi Levin, together with an international team of colleagues, will conduct two field seasons of archaeological research at Elandsfontein on the west coast of South Africa. The team brings together specialists from the U.S., South Africa, U.K., Australia, and Germany to study the environmental adaptations of Acheulean populations that were ancestral to modern humans. Understanding the distinctiveness of humans relative to other species is among the most important goals of the behavioral and cognitive sciences. Humans implement a set of behavioral strategies that allow for broad yet stable and flexible responses to novel situations. This flexibility directly relates to human traits that include complex communication, reliance on socially learned strategies, and extraordinary levels of cooperation. It has been suggested that these features reflect the dynamic environments in which humans have lived over the last million years. The current understanding of the interplay between human adaptability and environmental variation has developed almost entirely from late Pleistocene contexts (i.e., sites less than 130,000 years old). We know relatively little about the adaptive versatility and environmental context of preceding Middle Pleistocene (900 to 130 thousand years old) populations, however, because there are a limited number of archaeological sites of this age with adequate contextual information. Elandsfontein is a unique site where it is possible to explore the relationships between Acheulean behavior and environmental variability in the Middle Pleistocene.The goal of this research is to evaluate whether Acheulean hominins at Elandsfontein employed specific technological strategies in response to heterogeneous environments. This research will require intensive excavations to document the archaeological sites, the age of the artifacts and fossils recovered, and their environmental context. The field research will be integrated with laboratory studies on the recovered materials (e.g., fossils, artifacts, sediments) to build a detailed picture of how Acheulean hominins at Elandsfontein interacted with the environments in which they lived.Although the antiquity of distinctively human behaviors is well documented, explaining the origin of these behaviors is impossible without a comprehensive understanding of the behavioral variability in ancestral populations. The results of the research at Elandsfontein will directly assess this current inferential shortfall by generating data on how the behavior of some of these ancestral populations (Acheulean hominis at Elandsfontein) related to environmental diversity.This project will provide a series of measurable broader impacts to an international community in both student training and community outreach. The research will be integrated into a field course that trains American and South African undergraduates in archaeological field methods. The project also will generate research opportunities for students (graduate and undergraduate) at American and South African universities. Research efforts will be coordinated with the West Coast Fossil Park to expand the awareness of the importance of heritage in South Africa. This project will help preserve one of South Africa's most important paleontological and archaeological localities, which is currently owned by a mining enterprise and potentially subject to commercial excavations.