Late Pliocene Oldowan excavations at Kanjera South, Kenya

• Autores: Thomas Plummer, Joseph Ferraro, Peter Ditchfield, Laura Bishop, Richard Potts
• Localización: Antiquity, ISSN 0003-598X, Vol. 75, Nº 290, 2001, págs. 809-810
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • 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.