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Late Pliocene Oldowan excavations at Kanjera South, Kenya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Thomas Plummer ,
Joseph Ferraro ,
Peter Ditchfield ,
Laura Bishop  and
Richard Potts
Thomas Plummer
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Queens College, CUNY, Flushing, NY 11367, USA. [email protected]
Joseph Ferraro
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA. [email protected]
Peter Ditchfield
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1RJ, England. [email protected]
Laura Bishop
Affiliation:
Biological & Earth Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool L3 3AF, England. [email protected]
Richard Potts
Affiliation:
Human Origins Program, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC 20560, USA. [email protected]
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Extract

The appearance of Oldowan sites c. 2.5 million years ago signals one of the most important adaptive shifts in human evolution. Large mammal u butchery, stone artefact manufacture and novel transport and discard behaviours led to the accumulation of the first recognized archaeological debris. Although the earliest instances of these behaviours are 2.5 million years ago, most of what we know about Oldowan palaeoecology and behaviour is derived from localities more than half a million years younger, particularly c. 1.8 million-year-old sites from Bed I Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania (Potts 1988). Sites from Kanjera South, Homa Peninsula, southwestern Kenya, yield dense concentrations of artefacts in association with the oldest (c. 2.2 million years) substantial sample of archaeological fauna known thus far from Africa. This study is the first to use a wide range of traditional and innovative techniques to investigate Oldowan hominin behaviour and site formation processes before 2 million years ago.

Type
Special section
Information
Antiquity , Volume 75 , Issue 290 , December 2001 , pp. 809 - 810
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2001

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References

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