9311368 Phillips With National Science Foundation support Drs. James Phillips and Bruce Gladfelter will conduct one season of archaeological fieldwork in the Sinai Desert of Egypt. They will carry out small scale excavations at sites which belong to the Ahmarian tradition and date to approximately 30,000 to 35,000 years ago. They will also focus on associated sediments from this period which are likely to contain pollen and other remains permitting fine scale environmental reconstruction. This work constitutes the first step in a larger scale project in which the team hopes to excavate entire sites to reconstruct specific activities and to integrate site specific data into a broader environmental context. The research should reveal the underlying subsistence strategies employed by Ahmarian groups. The Amharian dates to the early Upper Paleolithic period in the Near East and represents one of the earliest cultures uniquely associated with anatomically modern humans. What makes it of particular interest is its limited areal distribution. Dr. Phillips believes that Amharian peoples developed subsistence strategies which facilitated adaptation to what was a patchy mosaic environment and that group size and movement maximized use of a wide range of areal limited resources. The data he wishes to collect will allow him to examine this hypothesis. This research is important for several reasons. It will provide data of interest to many archaeologists. It will also increase our understanding of how humans at a simple level of technology adapted to a marginal semi-arid environment.
