Taphonomy, the study of how organisms fossilize, has emerged as pivotal to reconstructing ancient human lifeways, through analysis of animal bones from archaeological sites. Using taphonomic analysis, paleoanthropologists are able to decipher the source of bone accumulations at sites and provide evidence relevant to assessment of the hunting and scavenging activities of early hominins, their diet, and their utilization of skills and technologies when they migrated out of Africa and into Eurasia.
Taphonomy studies ancient bones to infer the processes that produced modifications to them, but this could never proceed without well-documented, modern reference specimens that definitively link unique bone modifications to the specific agents inflicting them. This project will accomplish preparation of nearly 4000 irreplaceable taphonomic specimens for curation in the Smithsonian Institution's new National Taphonomic Reference Collection (NTRC). These collections, accumulated by investigators who pioneered experimental, ethno-archaeological, and landscape-scale taphonomic research in North America and Africa, cannot be reconstituted, given current legal, political, economic, and ecological circumstances. Researchers from three continents have already utilized the collections to study bone modifications, and the value of the collections to research and teaching will continue and strengthen following their curation at the Smithsonian; the NTRC is the first taphonomy repository globally and will be a magnet for US and international paleoanthropological and paleontological researchers.
The investigators will prepare the collections to meet the NTRC's strict standards for documentation and pest prophylaxis at the federally-compliant facilities at University of California, Santa Cruz. Intensive involvement of undergraduate students through the university's internship program will provide invaluable training and hands-on experience with essential biological collections in contributing to US federal research infrastructure development.
