Landscape Ecology and Hominid Land Use in the Lowermost Bed II Olduvai Basin

在国家科学基金会的支持下，罗伯特·布卢门申博士和他的同事们将继续在坦桑尼亚北方的奥杜威峡谷进行考古研究。在两个季节的实地考察过程中，他们将专注于一个地层水平线，该地层水平线可以追溯到不到200万年前，并保留了人类活动的痕迹。Blumenschine博士和他的同事们将继续通过仔细控制的挖掘来对这一层进行采样，并将收集石器和动物遗迹。由于它延伸了相当长的水平距离，通过对样本的比较，该团队将能够重建广泛的原始人类（以及可能的非原始人类）活动，深入了解地理上不同的行为，并将其置于环境框架中。为了进一步研究环境方面，该团队将从挖掘中收集沉积物，古土壤和碳酸盐样品，用于粒度，矿物学，稳定碳和氧同位素分析。对这些地质样本的实验室分析将为解释考古模式提供背景信息。单晶激光聚变氩-氩年代测定和微量元素分析将有助于在目标单元内建立更精确的时间控制。 这项研究的重要性主要有两个原因。首先，它将为人类文化能力的出现提供新的启示。奥杜威峡谷不仅发现了重要的原始人类化石遗迹，而且还发现了许多石器和明显相关的动物群。这些材料为研究早期原始人的文化能力提供了一个重点。利用奥杜威遗址的数据，古人类学家推测了肉类在早期原始人类饮食中的作用等问题，并质疑这些人是否有狩猎的能力。大多数现有数据来自“遗址”或密集的、空间上聚集的石头和骨头遗骸群。然而，考古学家已经意识到，这样的集群只代表了原始人类行为的一个方面，更小的、密度更低的分散体和根本没有物质的区域也可以提供重要的相关信息。Blumenschine博士和他的同事们将把他们的注意力集中在一个系统的方式在这两个'集群'和网站之间的分散。其次，这项工作将有助于开拓“景观考古学”领域。该小组将开发收集和分析非现场数据的技术，这些方法将适用于各种考古情况。 这项工作将提供对早期人类行为的深入了解。它将产生许多考古学家感兴趣的数据，并协助培训坦桑尼亚研究人员。它将有助于加强非洲和美国科学家之间的科学联系。

With National science Foundation support, Dr. Robert Blumenschine and his colleagues will continue their archaeological research at Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania. Over the course of two seasons' of fieldwork, they will focus on a stratigraphic horizon which dates to just under 2 million years ago and which preserve traces of human activity. Dr. Blumenschine and colleagues will continue to sample this horizon through carefully controlled excavation and will collect both stone artifacts and faunal remains. Because it extends over a considerable horizontal distance, through comparison of samples, the team will be able to reconstruct a broad range of hominid (and likely non-hominid) activities, gain insight into geographically varied behavior, and place this in an environmental framework. To further the environmental aspect of the research, the team will collect sediment, paleosol and carbonate samples from the excavations for analyses of grain size, mineralogy, stable carbon and oxygen isotopes. Laboratory analyses of these geological samples will provide contextual information for interpreting archaeological patterning. Single crystal laser fusion argon-argon dating and trace element analyses will serve to establish finer temporal control within the target unit. This research is significant for two primary reasons. First it will shed new light on the emergence of human cultural capabilities. Olduvai Gorge has yielded not only important hominid fossil remains, but also numerous assemblages of stone tools and apparently associated fauna. These materials have provided a focus for examination of the cultural capacities of early hominids. Using data from the Olduvai sites paleoanthropologists have speculated on issues such as the role of meat in early hominid diet and questioned whether such peoples had the ability to hunt. Most of the available data comes from `sites` or dense, spacially clustered groups of stone and bone remains. Archaeologists however have come to realize that such clusters represent only one aspect of hominid behavior and that smaller less dense scatters and areas which have no material at all can also provide important relevant information. Dr. Blumenschine and colleagues will focus their attention in a systematic fashion on both the `clusters` and the scatter between the sites. Secondly, this work will help to pioneer the field of `landscape archaeology.` The team will develop techniques for the collection and analysis of non-site data and these methods will be applicable in a wide variety of archaeological situations. This work will provide insight into early hominid behavior. It will yield data of interest to many archaeologists and assist in the training of Tanzanian researchers. It will serve to strengthen the scientific ties between African and United States scientists.