The Application of High Resolution Excavation in Reconstructing Early Technologies

宾夕法尼亚大学的哈罗德·迪布尔博士将与来自美国、加拿大和欧洲的同事一起，调查10万年前欧洲尼安德特人使用火的情况。这项研究将在法国旧石器时代遗址Pech de l’azazee IV进行。虽然人类使用火的证据似乎可以追溯到大约100万年前，但几条证据表明，直到很久以后，大约30万到40万年前，火才被经常使用。然而，最近的证据表明，至少对一些尼安德特人群体来说，使用火的频率并不是恒定的，而且在更新世较冷的时期，使用火的频率实际上有所下降。也许这是因为他们缺乏自己生火的能力，因此不得不从自然野火中获取，而自然野火在较温暖的时期更为普遍。尽管如此，这种模式表明，用火取暖或做饭并不是他们生存所必需的。这反过来又提出了一个问题：在有火的时候，他们究竟是如何使用火的？这项研究意义重大，因为它考察了技术与人类行为之间的基本关系，并将其置于一个深刻的时间背景中。该研究将在Pech de l' azaze4进行，旨在获得有关现场众多炉膛特征的最大数量的信息。这些信息大部分来自新开发的分析技术，这些技术可以从沉积物和相关的人工制品中确定古代火灾和使用的燃料的温度，以及能够检测到有机物质的存在。为了应用这些方法，该项目将通过从现场移除完整的沉积物块并在实验室环境中高度控制的技术下进行挖掘，大大提高当前挖掘技术的精度和准确性。这种方法是专门为这个项目开发的，它将使研究人员能够识别单个壁炉，并建立它们的地球化学、地球物理和沉积学特征，以反映它们是如何被使用的。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Dr. Harold Dibble, of the University of Pennsylvania, along with colleagues from the US, Canada, and Europe, will investigate the use of fire by European Neandertals at 100,000 years ago. This research will be conducted at the French Paleolithic site of Pech de l'Azé IV. While evidence for human use of fire appears to extend back to around 1 million years ago, several lines of evidence suggest that fire was not used regularly until much later, at around 300,000 to 400,000 years ago. More recent evidence shows that the frequency of fire use, at least for some Neandertal groups, was not constant, however, and that it actually decreased during colder periods of the Pleistocene. Perhaps this is because they lacked the ability to start fires themselves and thus had to acquire it from natural wildfires, which were more prevalent during warmer periods. Nonetheless, this pattern implies that fire for warmth or cooking was not necessary for their survival. This, in turn, raises the question of exactly how did they use fire when it was available. The research is significant because it examines the fundamental relationship between technology and human behavior and sets it into a deep chronological context.The research to be conducted at Pech de l'Azé IV is designed to obtain the maximum amount of information concerning the numerous hearth features at the site. Much of this information comes from newly-developed analytical techniques that can determine from the sediment and associated artifacts the temperatures of ancient fires and the fuels used, as well as being able to detect the presence of organic materials. In order to apply these methods, this project will significantly enhance the precision and accuracy of current excavation techniques by removing blocks of intact sediment from the site and excavating it under highly controlled techniques in a laboratory setting. This approach, developed specifically for this project, will allow the researchers to identify individual hearths and to establish geochemical, geophysical, and sedimentological signatures of them that reflect how they were used.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.