Under the direction of Dr. Steven Brandt, Mr Audax Mabulla, a graduate student at the Univeristy of Florida, will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. His archaeological research is focussed on the Lake Eyasi Basin located in northern Tanzania. Mr. Mabulla and his collaborators will conduct a surface survey of this 2,500 square km region. Within each of the four major ecological zones which are present he will employ a stratified random sampling technique. Selected areas will be located with aerial photographs and topographic maps. All archaeological remains within them will be noted and described. Supplemental auger and shovel testing will be conducted to locate buried remains and to detect patterns of soil modification. If time allows two or three Middle Stone Age -Late Stone Age (MSA-LSA) archaeological occurrences will be test excavated to recover datable material, and subsistence data. With this information Mr. Mabulla will attempt to reconstruct subsistence and land use strategies during these two periods of time. While archaeological, genetic and paleontological data strongly suggest that "modern" humans first appear in Africa, the timing and details of this process are little understood. Archaeologists have only limited knowledge of how these cultures adapted to the landscape or the subsistence practices they followed. The social organization of these groups are also not well understood. Prior work at rock shelters in this area have revealed the presence of Middle Stone Age peoples who may be members of this first "modern" group. Succeeding Late Stone Age peoples with a quite different lithic technology are also present. While rock shelters can provide useful information about adaptation to a very limited area, they cannot be used to understand broader regional strategies. The information collected by Mr. Mabulla, because it covers a larger area can fill this gap. Through use of both ethnographic comparison and LSA analysis, a "modern" pattern can be established and the earlier MSA one compared to it. This research is important for several reasons. It will shed light on the processes which lead to the emergence of modern humans. It will provide data of interest to many archaeologists and assist in the training of an extremely promising young scientist.
