Instrumentation for Landscape-Oriented Human Origins Research at Olduvai Gorge

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下。Robert Blumenschine和Fidelis Masao将购买一款新的四轮驱动车辆，以补充其大型多学科Olduvai研究项目现场团队使用的现有车辆。它们还将获得一个镜面立体镜，用于解释将在1996年的研究过程中获得的大型彩色航空照片，以及一个桌面制图软件和有关硬件，用于从数字化航空照片制作高分辨率地形图。几年来，这个小组一直在坦桑尼亚北部的这个遗址进行考古研究。该地区出土了重要的原始人化石以及古生物学和文化遗迹，研究的目标是重建200万年前的史前景观，并确定早期原始人是如何在其上分布活动的。研究小组沿着较低的第II层的一个独特的地质层进行研究，这代表了一段有限的时间，并在精心选择的间隔内挖掘了小型测试单元，以确定景观的变化和人类使用它的模式。由于现场队伍规模大，地形偏僻崎岖，需要可靠的四轮驱动车辆。同样，从航空照片中获得的精确地图将提供必要的基本研究工具。这项研究本身很重要，因为它将揭示早期原始人的行为方式，并有助于确定影响这一物种发展的因素。这项工作还将产生新的景观分析方法，由此产生的技术将适用于世界许多地区的许多考古情况。

With National Science Foundation support Drs. Robert Blumenschine and Fidelis Masao will purchase a new four-wheel drive vehicle to supplement existing vehicles used by their large, multidisciplinary Olduvai research project field team. They will also acquire a mirror stereoscope for interpretation of large-scale color aerial photographs to be obtained in the course of 1996 research as well as a desktop mapping software and associated hardware for the production of high resolution topographic maps from digitized aerial photographs. For several years this team has conducted archaeological research at this site in northern Tanzania. This area has yielded important hominid fossils as well as paleontological and cultural remains and the goal of the research is to reconstruct the prehistoric landscape at just under 2 million years ago and determine how early hominids distributed their activities over it. The team has followed a distinct geological horizon in lower Bed II which represents a limited period of time and excavated small test units at carefully selected intervals both to determine variation in landscape and the pattern of hominid use of it. Because of the large size of the field team and the isolated and rough terrain dependable four wheel drive vehicles are necessary. Likewise an accurate map derived from aerial photographs will provide an essential basic research tool. The research itself is important because it will shed important light on how early hominids behaved and help to determine the factors which shaped development of this species. The work will also yield new approaches to landscape analysis and the resultant techniques will be applicable in many archaeological situations in many parts of the world.