Recent paleoanthropological work at DK East, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania

Summary

Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, remains one of the richest sources of information on human bio-behavioral evolution between 1-2 million years ago. While much research has justifiably focused on the gorge’s junction area and its rich collection of sites, including FLK 22 (The Zinjanthropus Floor), the older fossiliferous deposits to the west have received much less attention in recent years. The DK area, which lies along the north edge of the main gorge, is particularly intriguing and was made famous by Mary Leakey’s excavation in 1962 and 1963 of thousands of fossils and lithics and, perhaps most famously, a stone circle originally thought to represent the remains of a windbreak. In October of 1968, a nearly complete cranium (OH 24), since attributed to Homo habilis, was discovered on the surface a few hundred meters east of the main DK excavations. It is in this area (DK East) that new excavations below Tuff IB (dated to ~1.85 million years ago) were undertaken in 2012, 2013, and 2014. Here, we summarize the work to date, which includes the taphonomic analysis of recently recovered faunal material and additional geological research.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

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