ONGOING TOPPP INVESTIGATIONS IN OLDUVAI GORGE, TANZANIA

Our three concurrent investigations as part of The Olduvai Paleoanthropology and Paleoecology Project (TOPPP) include archaeological and modern taphonomic inquiries. New field and lab work on the Bell’s Korongo East (BKE) site adds to our understanding of the paleolandscapes in which our human ancestors lived ~1-2 million years ago. BKE is a middle Bed II site located on the south side of the Side Gorge. Fossil-rich cross-bedded fluvial sands incise clay- and siltstones, and likely represent hominin activity loci. These deposits are complicated and erode easily, so we are pursuing reconstruction of local paleoenvironments and ancient alluvial sediment transport processes to understand site formation and what attracted hominins to BKE, while battling site erosion. We’re pairing dGPS mapping and surface modelling with profile exposure and analysis to excavate and preserve as much of the fragile site context as possible. Surface morphometric, and sediment chemical and biophysical analyses are expanding our knowledge of small-scale dynamics in the environments preserved in Olduvai's Side Gorge. We also have two modern bone accumulation localities, Olduvai Transect 1 (OT1), representing an open Serengeti Plain environment and Olduvai Transect 2 (OT2), a similar area with standing water in the wet season and abundant tree canopy shelter. For each transect, we are collecting bone surface deposits, and mapping elevation and landscape features, and statistically comparing the bone distributions and landscape features. By increasing understanding of the detailed relationship between modern bone distribution, weathering, and landscape variation, we can better understand relationships between open versus sheltered paleoecologies and archaeological material distributions. We continue to sample potential quartz toolstone localities throughout the Olduvai Gorge region and analyze them with pXRF. By cataloguing the local inselbergs of the Tanzanian Craton, we aim to test the chemical diversity and integrity of the individual outcrops, and therefore, whether we can source archaeological quartz assemblages to them. These varied investigations inform archaeological work at Olduvai Gorge on many scales, broadening the scope of future testable hypotheses.