Field Research in the Middle Awash Valley, Ethiopia

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

The research involves paleoanthropological fieldwork conducted in Ethiopia's Afar Depression. The Middle Awash research project is a multidisciplinary, international effort to help illuminate the origin and evolution of human ancestors and close relatives during the past six million years. The research project gives priority to placing archaeological and paleontological discoveries within accurate time-stratigraphic and paleoenvironmental contexts. The Middle Awash is a tectonically active segment of the African rift system. This study area offers a patchwork of sediments exposed by tectonic action and erosion, and calibrated by interbedded volcanic horizons. This unique set of geological circumstances allows the project to simultaneously explore different time horizons, and to generate data bearing on different aspects of human origins and evolution. The study area has yielded fossil hominoid remains spanning five million years; a longer record than is available anywhere else on earth. Six species in three hominid genera have already been discovered here, and every stage of paleolithic technological development is represented. The project's field investigations can be loosely divided into three stages for each major fossiliferous sedimentary package. First, exploration identifies and constrains the package. Geologists attempt to link it chronologically with other sites, and with the record of global climatic change embedded in cores of contemporary marine sediment taken from the floor of the adjacent Gulf of Aden. Next, focused research establishes the contents and chronostratigraphic relationships within each sediment package, generating much primary data in the form of rock samples, fossils, and artifacts. Finally, long-term management of each major exposed sedimentary package allows additional fossil and artifact recovery as erosion and excavation continue. Research funded by the current proposal will represent the final stage of overall exploration in the study area. Focused research is targeted on sedimentary packages in the critical c. 5.2 myr, c. 2.5 myr, and <1.0 million-year-old periods. Management of adjacent, already proven localities will provide additional data.