Early hominin landscape use in the Lower Omo Valley, Ethiopia: Insights from the taphonomical analysis of Oldowan occurrences in the Shungura Formation (Member F) Tiphaine Maurin, Pascal Bertran, Anne Delagnes, Jean-Renaud Boisserie To cite this version: Tiphaine Maurin, Pascal Bertran, Anne Delagnes, Jean-Renaud Boisserie. Early hominin landscape use in the Lower Omo Valley, Ethiopia: Insights from the taphonomical analysis of Oldowan occur- rences in the Shungura Formation (Member F). Journal of Human Evolution, Elsevier, 2017, 111, pp.33 - 53. 10.1016/j.jhevol.2017.06.009. hal-01696068 HAL Id: hal-01696068 https://hal-inrap.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01696068 Submitted on 30 Jan 2018 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. 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YJHEV2354_proof ■ 7 July 2017 ■ 1/21 Journal of Human Evolution xxx (2017) 1e21 55 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect 56 57 Journal of Human Evolution 58 59 60 journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhevol 61 62 63 64 65 1 Early hominin landscape use in the Lower Omo Valley, Ethiopia: 66 2 67 3 Insights from the taphonomical analysis of Oldowan occurrences 68 4 69 Q6 in the Shungura Formation (Member F) 5 70 6 a, * a, b a c, d 71 7 Q5 Tiphaine Maurin , Pascal Bertran , Anne Delagnes , Jean-Renaud Boisserie 72 8 a University of Bordeaux/CNRS, PACEA, batiment^ B8, allee Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, CS 50023, 33615, Pessac cedex, France 73 9 b Institut national de recherches archeologiques preventives, 140 avenue du Marechal Leclerc, 33130, Begles, France 74 c 10 CNRS/French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, French Center for Ethiopian Studies, P.O. Box, 5554, Addis Abeba, Ethiopia 75 Q1 d CNRS/University of Poitiers, IPHEP, 6, rue Michel-Brunet, 86000, Poitiers, France 11 76 12 77 13 article info abstract 78 14 79 15 80 16 Article history: The Oldowan archeological record of the Shungura Formation, Member F (Lower Omo valley, Ethiopia) Received 11 October 2016 81 17 comprises more than one hundred occurrences distributed within archeological complexes where Accepted 23 June 2017 multiple small spots were found in association with one or two larger occurrences. Such spatial 82 18 Available online xxx patterning could reflect hominin spatial behavior, repeated occupations within a single sedimentary unit, 83 19 or taphonomic and/or collection biases. Here we test these hypotheses by way of a geoarcheological and 84 20 Keywords: taphonomical analysis using four criteria to assess the preservation of the lithic assemblages: (1) size 85 Oldowan 21 composition, (2) artifact abrasion, (3) bone abrasion, and (4) orientations of lithic artifacts and bones (i.e., 86 22 Shungura Formation Omo fabrics). We propose a new model of taphonomically induced spatial patterning where the multiple, 87 23 Taphonomy small well circumscribed occurrences result primarily from post-depositional processes and therefore do 88 fl 24 Lithic not re ect any underlying behavioral patterns. The large number of archeological occurrences docu- 89 < 25 Spatial behavior mented in Member F, therefore, corresponds to a limited number of primary occupations ( 10). The 90 archeological occupation is mainly restricted to the lower part of Member F and may reflect a single or a 26 91 27 small number of occupation episodes, which were located on previous levees of the paleo-Omo River, in nearby floodplain areas, or on the riverbank. This strongly suggests that most of the knapping activities 92 28 originally took place close to the river. This preference of the Omo toolmakers for riverine environments 93 29 could explain the scarcity of archeological material in the upper part of Member F that comprises pri- 94 30 marily distal floodplain sedimentary facies. 95 31 © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 96 32 97 33 98 34 99 35 100 36 101 37 1. Introduction despite their being crucial for assessing the abilities of hominins to 102 38 adapt to varying environmental conditions. Site distribution, den- 103 fi fi 39 A signi cant number of recent studies have greatly improved sity, and spatial extension in the Oldowan differ signi cantly from 104 40 our understanding of technological skills shared by Oldowan tool- one context to another. Contexts with a limited number of dense 105 41 makers in eastern Africa (Isaac and Harris, 1997; Ludwig, 1999; de la and well circumscribed archeological occurrences, such as Hadar 106 42 Torre et al., 2003, 2004; Delagnes and Roche, 2005; Mora and de la (Kimbel et al., 1996), Lokalalei (Roche et al., 2003), Kanjera South 107 43 Torre, 2005; Hovers, 2009; Braun et al., 2009a; Faisal et al., 2010; (Plummer et al., 1999), Melka Kunture (Chavaillon and Piperno, 108 44 Stout et al., 2010; Barsky et al., 2011; Yustos et al., 2015), 2004), Fejej (de Lumley and Beyene, 2004), and Nyabusosi 109 45 including aspects of raw material provisioning (Stout et al., 2005; (Pickford et al., 1989) contrast with contexts comprising multiple 110 46 Blumenschine et al., 2008; Braun et al., 2008, 2009a, b; Harmand, small spots associated with one or two more consequential oc- 111 47 2009; Goldman-Neuman and Hovers, 2012). By contrast, very lit- currences. This latter type of spatial patterning is characteristic of 112 48 tle is known about patterns of landscape use (Blumenschine, 2003) the Oldowan archeological record of Gona (Semaw, 2000), Peninj 113 49 (de la Torre et al., 2003), Koobi Fora (Harris, 1997), Olduvai Gorge 114 50 (Leakey and Clark, 1971; Blumenschine et al., 2012), and Shungura 115 * 51 Corresponding author. Formation-Member F (Lower Omo valley, Ethiopia), where our 116 E-mail address: [email protected] (T. Maurin). 52 117 53 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2017.06.009 118 54 0047-2484/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 119 Please cite this article in press as: Maurin, T., et al., Early hominin landscape use in the Lower Omo Valley, Ethiopia: Insights from the taphonomical analysis of Oldowan occurrences in the Shungura Formation (Member F), Journal of Human Evolution (2017), http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2017.06.009 YJHEV2354_proof ■ 7 July 2017 ■ 2/21 2 T. Maurin et al. / Journal of Human Evolution xxx (2017) 1e21 1 recent surveys revealed the presence of more than one hundred 2.1. Archeological data 66 2 occurrences at a micro-regional scale, mostly clustered within a 67 3 limited number of archeological complexes (Delagnes et al., 2011; Our study focuses on six complexes of archeological occur- 68 4 Delagnes, 2012). rences, OMO 79, OMO 1/E, OMO 123, FtJi 1-3-4, FtJi 2, and FtJi 5 69 5 Such spatial patterning suggests three non-mutually exclusive (Fig. 1, Supplementary Online Material [SOM] Table S1), for which 70 6 hypotheses: (1) these occurrences relate directly to hominin spatial both excavation and surface collection data are available. Artifacts 71 7 behavior, either as an adaptive response to the specific character- in Member F are not randomly distributed across the outcrops 72 8 istics of the meandering landscape of the paleo-Omo River (Delagnes et al., 2011; Delagnes, 2012; Maurin et al., 2014) but 73 9 (Delagnes et al., 2011) or as a result of a functional complementarity cluster in areas designated here as “archeological complexes” 74 10 between “mini-” and “macro-sites” reflecting a home-based spatial (Figs. 1 and 2; Maurin et al., 2014). Such archaeological complexes 75 11 behavior, as suggested by Isaac at Koobi Fora (Isaac, 1981; Isaac correspond to specific areas within Member F (<1 ha), where at 76 12 et al., 1981); (2) they correspond to repeated but still indistin- least one dense occurrence is found in spatial proximity and 77 13 guishable occupational phases within a single sedimentary unit; stratigraphic continuity with multiple smaller occurrences. The 78 14 and/or (3) they reflect taphonomic and/or site inventory biases. stratigraphic position of occurrences forming each archeological 79 15 Here we test these hypotheses by way of a geoarcheological and complex can be inferred with a high degree of confidence when 80 16 taphonomical analysis of the archeological occurrences from the artifacts were visibly eroded from the outcrops. Artifacts are either 81 17 Shungura Formation-Member F, dated to between 2.32 ± 0.02 in situ (i.e., still embedded in the sediment), sub-in situ (i.e., the 82 18 million years (Ma) and 2.27 ± 0.04 Ma (McDougall and Brown, layer of origin is clearly identifiable), or redistributed on the slope 83 19 2008; McDougall et al., 2012). Although fine-grained alluvial by erosion. 84 20 sedimentation is favorable to the good preservation of archeo- Here we present an analysis of 4000 artifacts from both the IORE 85 21 logical sites, several studies have demonstrated such contexts do and OGRE field investigations: OMO 123 (Chavaillon, 1976 and 86 22 not systematically guarantee the integrity of the lithic assemblages unpublished data from Delagnes and colleagues), FtJi 1-3-4, FtJi 2, 87 23 (Isaac, 1967; Schick, 1987; Sitzia et al., 2012). Taphonomic analyses FtJi 5 (Merrick and Merrick, 1976), OMO 1/E, and OMO 123 (un- 88 24 of Oldowan sites are currently limited to single criteria, for published data from Delagnes and colleagues). Artifacts are 89 25 instance fabrics at Kanjera South (Plummer et al., 1999)orartifact generally small (Chavaillon, 1976; Merrick and Merrick, 1976) and 90 26 breakage by trampling or sediment compaction in A.L.