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Stable Isotopic Evidence for Landscape Environmental Reconstructions, Kapthurin Formation, Kenya David E

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Stable Isotopic Evidence for Landscape Environmental Reconstructions, Kapthurin Formation, Kenya David E University of Connecticut OpenCommons@UConn Doctoral Dissertations University of Connecticut Graduate School 5-2-2016 Stable Isotopic Evidence for Landscape Environmental Reconstructions, Kapthurin Formation, Kenya David E. Leslie University of Connecticut - Storrs, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations Recommended Citation Leslie, David E., "Stable Isotopic Evidence for Landscape Environmental Reconstructions, Kapthurin Formation, Kenya" (2016). Doctoral Dissertations. 1108. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/1108 Stable Isotopic Evidence for Landscape Environmental Reconstructions, Kapthurin Formation, Kenya David E. Leslie, PhD University of Connecticut, 2016 Global, regional, and local changes in environments are critically important to understanding the selective pressures that affected the hominin lineage. Shifts in regional environments of East Africa, driven by solar insolation, have been associated with adaptive niches of hominins during the Pleistocene epoch, a time period that spans the inception of the genus Homo and the emergence of own species, Homo sapiens. Several hypotheses link the influence of changing environments and the evolution of the genus Homo, based on global drying trends during the Pleistocene, but also the increased variability of dry and wet cycles near the equator, driven by Milankovitch cycles. These hypotheses are buttressed by continental and global environmental data from ice and ocean cores, but lack high-resolution, regional environmental data for support. The distribution of archaeological material across a paleolandscape is best understood, in the context of modern foragers’ daily activities, as a continuum of large, highly concentrated to small, highly diffuse archaeological sites. Landscape archaeology offers researchers a way to address this larger foraging context by reconstructing regional paleolandscapes and collecting representative samples of archaeological material. The Middle Pleistocene (781 – 126 ka) of East Africa records many significant events in human evolution; it encompasses the emergence of our own species, Homo sapiens, the development of technologies that are “modern”, and a shift to resource extraction from a diverse range of environments. Paleoanthropologists regularly use stable isotope ratios of several proxies (paleosols, pedogenic carbonates, mammalian teeth, tufa composition) to reconstruct environments associated with hominin evolution, but these are rarely applied to the Middle Pleistocene of East Africa. The application of stable isotope analyses to Middle Pleistocene sedimentary sequences may be useful for discerning the local environments associated with hominins who used Acheulean and Middle Stone Age technologies. In this dissertation, I combine a landscape perspective with paleoenvironmental reconstructions, primarily using stable isotope analyses of paleosols, mammalian tooth enamel, and pedogenic carbonates. This technique is applied to two paleolandscapes preserved in the Kapthurin Formation, a well-documented Middle Pleistocene sedimentary sequence containing Acheulean and Middle Stone Age technology, hominin remains identified to Homo erectus and Homo sp., and chimpanzee fossils. I also develop a novel technique for correlating modern primary biomass productivity with stable carbon isotope values of bulk soil organic matter, and provide a method for extrapolating primary biomass productivity from well preserved paleosols. The high-resolution landscape environmental reconstructions presented in this dissertation provide the first evidence for hominin site choice in two well-documented landscapes of the Middle Pleistocene, indicating that both Terminal Acheulean and MSA foragers regularly occupied wooded grassland ecosystems. Stable Isotopic Evidence for Landscape Environmental Reconstructions, Kapthurin Formation, Kenya David Edward Leslie B.A., West Virginia University, 2006 M.A., Florida Atlantic University, 2008 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut 2016 i © Copyright by David E. Leslie 2016 ii APPROVAL PAGE Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation Stable Isotopic Evidence for Landscape Environmental Reconstructions, Kapthurin Formation, Kenya Presented by David E. Leslie, B.A., M.A. Major Advisor _____________________________________________________ Sally McBrearty Associate Advisor _____________________________________________________ Gideon Hartman Associate Advisor _____________________________________________________ Daniel S. Adler University of Connecticut 2016 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people to thank for this dissertation. First, I would like to thank my wife, Sarah Sportman, for continuing to support me while I completed my studies. She has also read and edited many versions of this dissertation, although her academic interests lie within the archaeology of northeastern North America. I would like to dedicate this dissertation, such as it is, to our son, Charlie, who is a never-ending source of continuing inspiration to me; through his two-year old’s eyes I have begun to find a new appreciation for all aspects of nature and the world. I would also like to thank my parents, who have supported me over many years, and instilled in me an early appreciation for nature. My advisor, Sally McBrearty, has provided me with a wealth of knowledge and support throughout my graduate career, and facilitated much of this research through her own grant funding. Gideon Hartman provided lab space for much of these analyses, but more importantly, his door was always open to me from the very beginning of this project, providing endless feedback on ideas, manuscript drafts, and grant proposals. Dan Adler dedicated much of his time to reading and editing previous versions of this dissertation; without his careful attention to the theoretical underpinnings of these manuscripts, my work would have surely suffered. I count myself luck to have had three such advisors who dedicated much of their time and resources to my dissertation and career. There are many financial institutions to thank for this project. The National Science Foundation facilitated this research with a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (BCS 1343214). The Anthropology Department at UConn has been very supportive of my graduate career and research, providing Summer Research Fellowships, graduate support in the form of several teaching and research assistantships, and a dissertation writing fellowship. Sigma Xi iv provided a Grant-in-Aid of research for a component of this dissertation research. The Center for Environmental Science and Engineering provided a fellowship that supported some of the early data collection for this research. Finally, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School, and the Humanities Institute, all at UConn, funded portions of this research through fellowships. I also have many colleagues, advisors, and friends to thank for various support and feedback during this eight (!) year period of my life. In no particular order, and this list is by no means complete, I would like to thank the following people for support over the years: Bonface Kimeu, Nick Blegen, Cara Johnson, Breanne Clifton, Ali Mant, Andrew Hill, Bernard Muende, Mathew Macharwas, Simeon Chelal, Julius Marti, Alison Brooks, John Yellen, Rick Potts, Cliff Brown, Rob McCarthy, Natalie Munro, Alexia Smith, Zach Singer, Gabe Hrynick, Bill Farley, Lucas Proctor, Siavash Samei, and Jackie Meier. This dissertation research would also not have been possible without support from the National Museums of Kenya and their dedicated staff. Finally, I would like to thank the following individuals and organizations for facilitating stable isotope analyses: Bob Michener and the Stable Isotope Laboratory, Boston University; Marie Balasse, Joël Ughetto, and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle; and David Dettman and the Environmental Isotope Lab at the University of Arizona. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1 Kapthurin Formation 3 1.2 Middle Pleistocene Archaeology 4 1.3 Landscape Archaeology 7 1.4 Stable Isotope Ecology 8 1.5 Biomass Productivity 12 1.6 Research Questions 13 Chapter 2: A Middle Pleistocene Intense Monsoonal Episode from the Kapthurin Formation, Kenya: Stable Isotopic Evidence from Bovid Tooth Enamel and Pedogenic Carbonates 2.1 Introduction 15 2.2 Background 17 2.2.1 Kapthurin Formation 17 2.2.2 Stable Carbon Isotopes 22 2.2.3 Stable Oxygen Isotopes 25 2.2.4 Paleoclimate Predictions 27 2.3 Methods 30 2.4 Results and Discussion 35 2.4.1 Carbon Isotopic Composition of Tooth Enamel by Tribe 35 2.4.2 Oxygen Isotopic Composition of Tooth Enamel and Aridity 42 vi Page 2.4.3 Paleoenvironmental Interpretations from tooth enamel 48 2.4.4 Carbon and Oxygen Composition of Pedogenic Carbonates 50 2.5 Conclusions 53 Chapter 3: A New Proxy for Paleo-Biomass Productivity: Incorporating Stable Isotopes and the Satellite-derived Normalized Differential Vegetation Index 3.1 Introduction 56 3.2 Materials and Methods 57 3.2.1 Bulk Soil Organic Matter 57 3.2.2 Study Area 59 3.2.3 Satellite Derived Biomass Productivity 65 3.2.4 Soil Samples 67 3.2.5 Data Analysis 69 3.3 Results and Discussion 70 3.3.1 Modern Biomass Productivity 71 3.3.2 Paleo Biomass Productivity 72 3.4 Conclusions 79 vii Page Chapter 4: Stable Isotopic Evidence for Paleoenvironments from
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