The earliest known remains of anatomically modern humans occur in Africa. These remains are associated with people practicing Middle Stone Age (MSA) activities. The most intensive research on MSA peoples has been in the Cape Province of South Africa, but remains also have been uncovered in the Katanda area of the Semliki Valley in eastern Zaire. The Katanda sites are associated with fish remains, which suggest that aquatic resources may have been used much earlier than is evident at the South African sites. One of the Katanda sites also has yielded six barbed bone points, which are estimated to date from about 40,000 years before the present, the earliest known record of complex bone technology. This grant will permit further excavation of paleosol-related remains at the most productive of the Katanda sites. It also will permit surveying and mapping of the paleosol horizon along a roughly three kilometer exposure in order to place the archaeological findings in a broader regional context, and it will enable use of dosimeters and additional samples to determine more accurately the age of these MSA horizons. This project will expand on the work of previously sponsored excavations from a very promising site, which already has shed new light on Middle Stone Age peoples in central Africa. This work will contribute to our knowledge about the specific features of this site, and it also will contribute to our more general understandings of the processes by which evolution of modern humans was related to the development of new technologies and the exploitation of new environments and food sources.
