The landscape zooarchaeology and paleontology of Plio-Pleistocene Olduvai, Tanzania and their implications for early hominid ecology.

摘要

Zooarchaeological studies aiming to understand Oldowan hominid lifeways traditionally use single or a few sites to do so. Sites, however, being spatially small, do not reflect the spatial scales at which larger mammal land use and subsistence strategies can be identified. The Olduvai Landscape Paleoanthropology Project (OLAPP), directed by Blumenschine, Masao and Peters, attempts to better capture such behaviors by using broader spatial scales, using Bed I (1.8 mya) and lowermost Bed II (1.7–1.75 mya) strata at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.; This dissertation describes the vertebrate fossil specimens excavated by OLAPP from 1989–1997 over a landscape scale. It is one of the first studies to use Plio-Pleistocene landscape assemblages of in situ vertebrate fossils to test predictions about hominid land use behaviors. It also prescribes methods for addressing challenges introduced to faunal analysis by landscape archaeology, and proposes future research directions.; Overall, 7,922 identified specimens derived from 13 different depositional environments (landscape divisions), ranging from microanimals, to primates, carnivores, antelopes, and megafauna. The 5,568 larger mammal specimens show a minimum of 1,626 elements and 478 individuals spanning 26 taxonomic groups.; Resolving a basic yet imperative question, landscape sampling does indeed display faunal variability over space and some of these patterns do seem to be paleoecologically driven. Such patterns reveal that the Olduvai basin experienced moderate to high carnivore competition overall, much like the present-day open savanna grasslands in East Africa. Even the freshwater environments of the channel and wetland, although reflecting lower carnivore competition than other areas, are not representative of woodlands. Despite predation dangers, hominids still butchered carcasses in these places.; Site-oriented archaeology cannot reveal such comparative information, which calls attention to our overzealous tendency to use the “classic” site of FLK Zinjanthropus as a yardstick for early hominid ecology, and has significant implications for Olduvai's place in hominid evolution. The sampled portions of the paleoOlduvai basin did not seem to be permanent habitats for hominids during upper Bed I (western side) to lowermost Bed II (east) times, but were perhaps seasonal habitats or diurnal visiting places that provided carcass, plant, and other resources but not year-round overnight refuges.