Patterns of Hominin Land Use and Raw Material Procurement in the Paleo-Olduvai Basin, Tanzania

Summary

Suitable toolstone was a key affordance for Early Stone Age (ESA) populations across Africa. Northern Tanzania’s Olduvai Basin, because it contains numerous ESA archaeological localities and a variety of quartzitic outcrops, offers an excellent opportunity to evaluate the effect of raw material distribution on hominin landuse. While the lithology and mineralogy of these outcrops have been well described, their macroscopic similarities confound efforts to reliably determine the exact source of quartzite artifacts. Here, we provide quantitative geochemical data that (1) statistically distinguish three of the Basin’s quartzite outcrops and (2) probabilistically identify the origin of a sample of artifacts from several of the Basin’s important ESA lithic assemblages.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Ecological Perspectives on Hominin Landscape Use during the Early Stone Age of Africa

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14539