Under the direction of Dr. Sally McBrearty, Mr. Nicholas Blegen will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. The project explores the origin of modern human behavior through archaeological research into the technologies, subsistence strategies and environments present in the later middle Pleistocene (~300-130 thousand years ago) of Sub-saharan Africa, the time and place that Homo sapiens originated. National Science Foundation support will be used for archaeological excavation of the Sibilo School Road Site (SSRS) in Baringo, Kenya. This site preserves stone tools and fossil bones in sediments recently dated to 284 thousand years before present, roughly 90 thousand years before the first appearance of Homo sapiens. The rare associations of stone tools and bones in a well-dated context at the SSRS suit it to answer three important questions about hominin behavioral evolution in this important time period: 1) What types of stone tools were present in the East African later middle Pleistocene? Stone tools from SSRS have the potential to characterize the types of tools present in African later middle Pleistocene as well as how they were made and used. This can reveal if advanced composite technologies such as spears or projectiles were already in use around the origin of Homo sapiens or whether older technologies such as large hand-held technologies persisted. 2) What types of fauna were present in the later middle Pleistocene? The SSRS has the potential to produce an ecologically informative fossil fauna in a well-dated context, and provide insight into the environments that hominins of this time period occupied. 3) What were hominin subsistence strategies like in the later middle Pleistocene of East Africa? The SSRS has the potential to produce a rare record of subsistence behavior in the later middle Pleistocene of East Africa through recovery of an in situ archaeological fauna. An archaeological fauna would provide insight into the abilities of hunters in this period to take large and dangerous prey, choices of which prey body parts to transport and the distance this prey is transported. All of these are important to demonstrating similarities and differences between later middle Pleistocene hominins and modern hunter-gathers.
The later middle Pleistocene of Africa encompasses significant behavioral and biological adaptations in human evolution. Many researchers in the field agree that all behavioral characteristics unique to Homo sapiens did not appear simultaneously. However, the rarity of associated stone tools and fossil bones in well-dated contexts for this time period poses challenges for establishing the order in which modern behaviors were acquired as well as the timing their appearance relative to environmental changes and the biological origin of the human species. Results of this project will: 1) Produce a new later middle Pleistocene stone tool assemblage in a well-dated context from East Africa. 2) Produce a new faunal assemblage to the small but growing later middle Pleistocene data set. Individually both are valuable contributions to the understanding the origin of Homo sapiens. Take together the presence of multiple behavioral characteristics in association offer the rare opportunity to relate behaviors like technology, subsistence behavior and habitat preference around the time of our species origin
Data collection will be conducted in collaboration with Kenyan researchers in the National Museums of Kenya and local communities of Baringo, Kenya. Research funded by this proposal will assist in the doctoral training of the Co-PI, Nick Blegen, and benefit the National Museums of Kenya and local community.
