With National Science Foundation support Dr. Salvatore Capaldo will study archaeological materials stored in the National Museum of Kenya. He will examine faunal remains which date to between 1.6 and 1.8 million years in age and were excavated from the site of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. Because the first physical byproducts of human behavior date to just over 2 million years ago, the Olduvai materials are important because they document an early stage in the development of humans. At Olduvai archaeologists have uncovered numerous areas in which stone tools and animal bones have been found in close spatial association. For many years scientists believed that these concentrations constituted `sites` where hunters brought the bodies of prey animals and then butchered and ate them. However careful study of the faunal remains revealed toothmarks of hyenas and other animals and the `hunter` model became difficult to support. It is possible, for example that the prey were first killed by non-human carnivores and that humans scavenged the bones for the remaining scraps of meat and marrow. It is also possible that many of the carnivore toothmarks post-date hominid intervention. In experimental work, Dr. Capaldo and his colleagues have developed techniques for distinguishing between hominid and non-hominid bone modification and to reconstruct the order in which these took place. He will apply these procedures to a series of Olduvai assemblages. Archaeologists wish to understand when distinctively human behavioral traits emerged for this will shed light on the processes which led to the observable range of human behaviors. Some believe that hominids of early Olduvai times possessed a behavioral repertory which shared much with recent humans while others disagree. Archaeologists want to know whether these early people were able to hunt large animals on their own or whether they were dependent of meat scavenged from carnivore kills. Dr. Capaldo's research should help to answer this question. The results will be of interest to many archaeologists. The work will also assist in refining analytic techniques of potential wide applicability.
