Expanding the Interpretation of Oldowan Archaeofaunas with Comprehensive Bone Modification Studies

在国家科学基金会的支持下，Salvatore Capaldo博士将研究存放在肯尼亚国家博物馆的考古材料。他将研究从坦桑尼亚奥杜威峡谷遗址挖掘出来的160万至180万年前的动物遗骸。由于人类行为的第一个物理副产品可以追溯到200多万年前，奥杜威材料很重要，因为它们记录了人类发展的早期阶段。在奥杜威，考古学家发现了许多地区，其中石器和动物骨骼被发现在密切的空间联系。多年来，科学家们认为，这些集中地构成了猎人们带来猎物尸体，然后宰杀和吃掉它们的“场所”。然而，对动物群遗骸的仔细研究发现了鬣狗和其他动物的牙印，“猎人”模式难以得到支持。例如，有可能猎物首先被非人类的食肉动物杀死，而人类则从骨头中寻找剩余的肉和骨髓碎片。也有可能许多食肉动物的齿痕是在原始人类介入之后才出现的。在实验工作中，Capaldo博士和他的同事们开发了区分原始人和非原始人骨骼修饰的技术，并重建了这些修饰发生的顺序。他将把这些程序应用于一系列奥杜威的组合。 考古学家希望了解独特的人类行为特征是何时出现的，因为这将揭示导致可观察到的人类行为范围的过程。一些人认为奥杜威早期的原始人拥有一套与现代人类有很多共同之处的行为模式，但另一些人则不同意。考古学家想知道这些早期的人是否能够自己猎杀大型动物，或者他们是否依赖于从食肉动物杀死的动物中获得的肉。Capaldo博士的研究应该有助于回答这个问题。这些结果将引起许多考古学家的兴趣。这项工作还将有助于改进可能广泛适用的分析技术。

With National Science Foundation support Dr. Salvatore Capaldo will study archaeological materials stored in the National Museum of Kenya. He will examine faunal remains which date to between 1.6 and 1.8 million years in age and were excavated from the site of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. Because the first physical byproducts of human behavior date to just over 2 million years ago, the Olduvai materials are important because they document an early stage in the development of humans. At Olduvai archaeologists have uncovered numerous areas in which stone tools and animal bones have been found in close spatial association. For many years scientists believed that these concentrations constituted `sites` where hunters brought the bodies of prey animals and then butchered and ate them. However careful study of the faunal remains revealed toothmarks of hyenas and other animals and the `hunter` model became difficult to support. It is possible, for example that the prey were first killed by non-human carnivores and that humans scavenged the bones for the remaining scraps of meat and marrow. It is also possible that many of the carnivore toothmarks post-date hominid intervention. In experimental work, Dr. Capaldo and his colleagues have developed techniques for distinguishing between hominid and non-hominid bone modification and to reconstruct the order in which these took place. He will apply these procedures to a series of Olduvai assemblages. Archaeologists wish to understand when distinctively human behavioral traits emerged for this will shed light on the processes which led to the observable range of human behaviors. Some believe that hominids of early Olduvai times possessed a behavioral repertory which shared much with recent humans while others disagree. Archaeologists want to know whether these early people were able to hunt large animals on their own or whether they were dependent of meat scavenged from carnivore kills. Dr. Capaldo's research should help to answer this question. The results will be of interest to many archaeologists. The work will also assist in refining analytic techniques of potential wide applicability.