Reports on Completed Research for 2009
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Reports on Completed Research for the year 2009 The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc. is a private operating foundation dedicated to the advancement of anthropology throughout the world. Through a variety of programs, the foundation aids research in all branches of anthropology and closely related disciplines concerned with human origins, development, and variation. This report is a compilation of edited abstracts for completed research, submitted by grantees in 2009 as stipulated in their grant agreements. The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropolocial Research, Inc. 470 Park Ave. South, 8th Floor North • New York, NY 10016-6819 Phone: 212.683.5000 • FAX: 212.683.9151 REPORTS ON COMPLETED RESEARCH The following research projects, supported by Foundation grants, were reported as complete during 2009. The reports are listed by subdiscipline and geographic area (where applicable), in alphabetical order. A Bibliography of Publications resulting from Foundation-supported research (as reported for the same period) follows, as well as an Index of Grantees Reporting Completed Research. ARCHAEOLOGY Africa: DR. MICHAEL CHAZAN, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, was awarded a grant in May 2007 to aid research on “Archaeology of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape Province, South Africa.” Research funded at Wonderwerk Cave (South Africa) has helped to establish it as one of the most important sites in southern Africa. Research at the back of the cave (Excavation 6) indicates that over 0.180 Ma (million years ago) in the Fauresmith, hominins introduced into this dark locality (approximately 140m from the cave entrance) objects with special sensory properties. Intercalation of a 3D-laser scan of the cave interior and a survey of the overlying hillside confirms the absence of another entrance, implying purposeful occupation of Excavation 6, perhaps due to its special natural visual and acoustic qualities. This suggests that sensitivity to the sensory properties of a landscape and to materials, formed an integral element in the emergence of modern symbolic behavior. The age of the lowest in situ layers in the cave front (Excavation 1) has been confirmed as ca. 2.0 Ma, and represents the earliest evidence for intentional hominin cave use in the world. This finding was covered widely in the international media and has contributed to the candidacy of this site for World Heritage status. DR. ROSALIA GALLOTTI, University of Rome, Rome, Italy, received funding in October 2007 to aid research on “Technical Behaviors during the Oldowan at Garba IVD (Melka Kunture, Ethiopia).” The site of Garba IVD has yielded one of the richest lithic assemblages in East Africa dated to 1.5-1.4 million years. This period is crucial to understand the relationship between Oldowan and Early Acheulean and to characterize the diagnostic aspects of these early human activities. The lithic production of Oldowan knappers at Garba IVD denotes an evidence of raw material selection, involving a certain level of knowledge of the effects of volcanic rocks properties. The production of small-medium flakes is the principal goal of the knapping activity. The débitage methods are similar to those identified in other Oldowan East African sites. Obsidian exploitation strategies show a more complex techno-economic pattern. The use of this high-quality raw material is a unicum in the Oldowan framework. The rare and not-systematic production of Large Cutting Tools does not present the same characteristic patterns of the Early Acheulean assemblages in East Africa as specific raw materials procurement modalities and particular processes of core reduction to obtain large blanks. In the end the revision of the Garba IVD assemblage adds new data confirming the idea of a more elaborate and variable Oldowan complex, proposed in recent years by the technological re-examination of other East African penecontemporaneus sites. 2 CATHERINE HARADON, then a student at George Washington University, Washington, DC, received funding in April 2008 to aid research on “Environmental and Faunal Context of the Acheulean to MSA Transition in Africa,” supervised by Dr. Richard Potts. This research examines environmental change as a factor in the transition between the Acheulean and Middle Stone Age (MSA) archaeological industries of Africa during the Middle Pleistocene 780-130 ka (thousand years ago). Faunal assemblages from two late Acheulean and transitional/early MSA sites (Olorgesailie, Kenya, and Cave of Hearths, South Africa) are used as proxies for environmental change. Species identifications provide broad ecological indicators, and measurements of teeth and bones contribute information on the diet of the animals and the type of vegetation they inhabited. Preliminary results suggest that the Acheuelan fauna at the Cave of Hearths was dominated by large-bodied, grassland- adapted taxa. The MSA fauna consists of smaller-bodied taxa that were adapted to a wider range of environments. This resembles the East African pattern of turnover from large- bodied grazers replaced by smaller-bodied, more variably adapted taxa around the time that modern human behaviors began to emerge on the African continent. Continuing research will investigate paleoecological similarities between East and South Africa at this time through additional analyses of the Cave of Hearths fauna; analysis and comparison of the Olorgesailie faunal assemblages; and analysis of metric data from both sites, including feeding types, body sizes, and habitat indicators. DR. GARY HAYNES, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada, received funding in April 2008 to aid research on “Later Stone Age Foraging in Northwestern Zimbabwe Just before the Transition to Agropastoralism.” One of the mysteries of human cultural history in much of southern Africa is why (and how) human groups made the dramatic switch from hunting and gathering to farming. This project’s study area in northwestern Zimbabwe contains very understudied archaeological evidence about the stone-age foragers of distant prehistory, and also just the merest hint of evidence about the farming peoples of a few hundred years ago—but nearly nothing is known about the critical time period in between. This project aims to provide the missing detail. This project seeks to reconstruct the lifeways of hunter- gatherers in northwestern Zimbabwe 4000-2000 years ago, just before the profound cultural transformation of nomadic foraging systems into a radically different economy of agropastoralism. The study area is situated in a possible corridor of human ideas and population movements into southern Africa from the north, across the Zambezi River. Multi-disciplinary evidence about human adaptation to changing environmental conditions is being sought in the study of sediments and ancient underground water, and in archaeological excavations of rockshelters that are yielding enormous amounts of stone tools, bone remains of animals hunted and eaten, ostrich eggshell beads, and charcoal that can be identified to tree species and radiometrically dated. DR. CHRISTOPHER HENSHILWOOD, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway, and DR. FRANCESCO D’ERRICO, Université de Bordeaux 1, Talence, France, received an International Collaborative Research Grant in October 2006, to aid collaborative research on the use of Nassarius kraussianus shells as ornamentation in southern Africa Middle Stone Age. The aim of this project was to investigate the human use of Nassarius kraussianus (Nk), as ornamentation during the Middle Stone Age and the Later Stone Age in southern Africa. In particular the collaborative research wanted to identify the factors (human choice vs. environmental conditions) playing a role in the size variability of Nk shell beads, and document and identify the causes (taphonomic vs. anthropogenic) of the modifications recorded on archaeological specimens (perforation, pigment staining, color change, use wear, heating). In order to achieve these goals, the researchers used optical and scanning 3 electron microscopy, elemental analysis, and Raman spectroscopy to identify shell structure and composition, document changes under heating at different temperatures and in different environments, and differentiate them from changes produced by diagenetic processes. Optical and electron microscopy was also used to analyze use wear on archaeological and experimentally worn shells. Seven morphological (Perforation Type, Presence/absence of carnivore drills, Color, Location of use-wear, Age-class, State of completeness, Morphology of the Apex) and two morphometric variables (shell height and shell width) were systematically recorded on modern biocoenoses and thanatocoenosis of this species, as well as on two MSA, 37 LSA, and seven burial sites (ca 5000 specimens). JACK T. MCCOY, then a student at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, was awarded a grant in December 2005 to aid research on “Ecological and Behavioral Implications of New Archaeological Occurrences from Koobi Fora, Kenya,” supervised by Dr. John W.K. Harris. Decades of investigations in Upper Burgi Member exposures (2.2 to 1.9 Ma) by many prominent paleoanthropologists have produced more than three dozen hominin body fossils but virtually no stone tools or other evidence of behavior has been reported. These exposed sediments preserve an archive of fossils that can reveal a great deal about the ecology, environment, and changing foraging behaviors of the earliest members of the genus Homo. Through the collection and analysis of