Doctoral Dissertation Research: Zooarchaeological and Taphonomic Perspectives on Hominid-Carnivore Interactions at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania

在特拉维斯·R·皮克林博士的监督下，查尔斯·埃格兰将分析坦桑尼亚奥杜瓦伊峡谷的几个化石骨骼组合。奥杜瓦伊峡谷因其丰富的记录而闻名，记录了早更新世(1.8至150万年前)早期人类的行为和进化。奥杜瓦伊群体将解决的一个关键问题是，早期人类从主要吃素的祖先饮食转变为越来越依赖肉类和骨髓等大型哺乳动物组织的饮食。这种饮食转变的一个重要后果是增加了与狮子和鬣狗等大型危险食肉动物的竞争。因此，这项研究的首要目标将是了解人类/食肉动物的相互作用以及这种相互作用是如何构建早期人类生存实践的。早期人类生存的特征构成了许多重要的进化模型的基础。例如，在早更新世，营养密集的大型哺乳动物组织的获得与人类生活史的演变有关。其他研究人员认为，史前的生存习俗可以提供对当代饮食的洞察。一些人认为，肉类食用量的增加促进了复杂社会行为的演变，例如广泛分享食物，或许还有性别分工。最后，还提出了将吃肉与大脑大小增加以及人类成功迁移和殖民的能力联系起来的模型。这些想法中的许多都切中了作为人类意味着什么的核心，需要对考古记录进行批判性和整体性的审视，以充分评估它们。NSF资助的研究将通过记录与大型食肉动物的竞争如何决定早期人类在哪里以及多长时间获得大型哺乳动物资源，来为这一重要问题做出贡献。这些数据随后将被用来评估上述许多模型。这项研究将有助于编写一本旨在向考古学家提供可用于测试更新世早期人类生存模式的最大单一数据库的编辑卷。这些数据也将对各级教育工作者有用，他们依赖于对原始化石数据的准确汇编，将这些问题呈现给更广泛的受众。最后，作者将在考古方法方面获得宝贵的培训。

Under the supervision of Dr. Travis R. Pickering, Charles Egeland will analyze several fossil bone assemblages from Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. Olduvai Gorge is particularly well-known for its rich record of early human behavior and evolution during the early Pleistocene (between 1.8 and 1.5 million years ago). One critical issue that will be addressed with the Olduvai assemblages is the shift by early humans from a largely vegetarian ancestral diet to one increasingly reliant on large mammal tissues like meat and marrow. An important consequence of this dietary shift would have been increased levels of competition with large, dangerous carnivores such as lions and hyaenas. Therefore, the overarching goal of this research will be to understand human/carnivore interactions and how this structured early human subsistence practices. Characterizations of early human subsistence underlie a number of important evolutionary models. For example, the acquisition of nutrient-dense large mammal tissues in the early Pleistocene has been linked to the evolution of the human life history. Other researchers have argued that prehistoric subsistence practices can provide insights into contemporary diets. Increased meat-eating is thought by some to have promoted the evolution of complex social behaviors such as extensive food-sharing and perhaps sexual division of labor. Finally, models linking meat-eating to increased brain size and the ability of humans to successfully migrate and colonize have also been proposed. Many of these ideas hit at the very core of what it means to be human, and a critical and integrated look at the archaeological record is required to fully evaluate them. NSF-funded research will contribute to this important issue by documenting how competition with large carnivores dictated where and how often early humans had access to large mammal resources. These data will then be utilized to evaluate many of the above-mentioned models. This research will contribute to an edited volume aimed at providing archaeologists with the single largest database available for testing models of human subsistence in the early Pleistocene. Such data will also be useful to educators at all levels, who depend on an accurate compilation of the primary fossil data to present these issues to a wider audience. Finally, the author will gain valuable training in archaeological methods.