Archaeological predictions for hominid land use in the paleo-Olduvai Basin, Tanzania, during lowermost Bed II times.

Abstract

We present a preliminary predictive model of Oldowan stone artefact and scavenged larger mammal bone assemblages for 11 landscape facets modeled earlier to occur across a large portion (> 300 km2) of the paleo-Olduvai Basin during lowermost Bed II times. This second phase of model-building is based on our earlier characterizations of the basin's landscape ecostructure and the inter-facet distribution of key resources and hazards probably encountered by Late Pliocene hominids (Peters & Blumenschine, 1995, 1996). Our current extension of the model of hominid-landscape interactions specifies additional theoretical components, including: (1) the assumed capabilities of Oldowan hominids (presumably Homo habilis, primarily); (2) the landscape-facet-specific tasks they carried out; (3) the immediate stone and bone task residues they produced; and (4) the predicted composition, condition, density, and clustering of stone artefact and butchered and unbutchered bone assemblages for each facet. We develop ecological linkages between these new and formerly reported modeling components, the most fundamental of which is the facet-specific degree of tree/shrub cover abundance, and the correlated degree of competition among larger carnivores and hominids for scavengeable larger mammal carcasses. These factors condition variability among landscape facets in scavenging opportunities encountered by hominids, which in our model is the major predictor of bone and stone artefact assemblage composition. The predictive value of scavenging reflects the bias of paleoanthropological traces toward technology and butchery in their landscape context, but the model is surprisingly insensitive to what are usually thought to be critical social components of hominid land use. The predictions for the traces of hominid-landscape interactions modeled herein can be tested in the future against the landscape archaeological sample being excavated from lowermost Bed II by the Olduvai Landscape Paleoanthropology Project.