Kathy Schick

Indiana University Bloomington | IUB · Cognitive Science Program

Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania is part of a globally important archeological and paleoanthropological World Heritage Site location critical to our understanding of modern human evolution. The Ndutu Beds in the upper part of the geological sequence at Olduvai Gorge represent the oldest unit to yield modern Homo sapiens skeletal material and Midd...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

Archaeology of the Middle Awash, Ethiopia

Volcano-sedimentary cores recovered from Pleistocene Palaeolake Olduvai by the Olduvai Gorge Coring Project (OGCP) provide a high-resolution record for reconstructing climatic and environmental contexts of hominin evolution. Approximately 612 m were recovered from four cores from three drill sites across the basin depocentre through scientific dril...

Previously, Olduvai Bed I excavations revealed Oldowan assemblages <1.85 Ma, mainly in the eastern gorge. New western gorge excavations locate a much older ~2.0 Ma assemblage between the Coarse Feldspar Crystal Tuff (~2.015 Ma) and Tuff IA (~1.98 Ma) of Lower Bed I, predating the oldest eastern gorge DK assemblage below Tuff IB by ~150 kyr. We char...

Primary carbonate and marl layers and limestone nodular horizons were intersected in OGCP Boreholes 1A, 2A, 3A, 3B, drilled into the depocentre of Palaeolake Olduvai. The various carbonate types were analysed, employing petrographic (including cathodo-luminescence), stable isotope, and sequence stratigraphic techniques, and recorded important infor...

The Olduvai Gorge Coring Project drilled a total of 611.72 m of core (575.48 m recovered) of mostly fluvio- lacustrine and fan-delta volcaniclastic Pleistocene strata at three sites in the Olduvai Basin, Tanzania, in 2014. We have developed a chronostratigraphic framework for three of the cores based on 40Ar/39Ar dating of core and outcrop volcanic...

We present data and results of a passive seismic experiment that we operated between June 2016 and May 2018 in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (northern Tanzania), located on the western side of the eastern branch of the Eastern African Rift (EAR) system. The motivation for this experiment is twofold: (1) investigating the extension of the Olduvai...

We present data and results of a passive seismic experiment that we operated between June 2016 and May 2018 in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (northern Tanzania), located on the western side of the eastern branch of the Eastern African Rift (EAR) sys- tem. The motivation for this experiment is twofold: (1) investigating the extension of the Olduv...

Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania contains a fossiliferous, well-characterized Pleistocene sedimentary record and provides the opportunity to study the relationships between a changing climate, ecology, and hominin evolution. The Olduvai Gorge Coring Project drilled four cores (1A, 2A, 3A, and 3B) into the depocenter of Paleolake Olduvai in 2014 t...

For five decades Olduvai Gorge has been a key site to reconstruct and understand the relationship between environmental and landscape conditions and use of affordances by early African hominin populations. Following the first Olduvai Gorge Coring project (OGCP) during 2014, a multiproxy microbiological analysis, which includes phytoliths, pollen, d...

Inter- and intra-rater reliability studies in experimental archaeology promote consistency and replicability in the lithic analysis methods that are applied to interpretations of the archaeological record. Replication attempts to classify a knapper’s hand preference post-hoc using published methodologies that focus on right- and left-oriented flake...

The Olduvai Basin of northern Tanzania contains well-known Pleistocene archaeological sites in a palaeoenvironmental setting of interfingering paleolake and volcanic fan deposits. This study documents the mineral assemblages, as determined qualitatively through bulk X-ray Diffraction (XRD) of systematically sampled lacustrine sediments from Olduvai...

The Olduvai Gorge Coring Project (OGCP) drilled four boreholes 1A, 2A, 3A, 3B at three sites into the central palaeolake of the Olduvai Basin depocentre. Previously known Beds I, II, III, IV, Masek Beds and Ndutu are identifiable in the upper part of the cores, and from these formations predominantly lacustrine facies associations are recognised. T...

The Olduvai Gorge deposits contain a rich archaeological record documenting the evolution of hominin behavior over the last 2 million years. While archaeological assemblages in the lower sedimentary layers (Beds I-II) are well preserved in relatively secure chronostratigraphic contexts, the age of overlying beds is poorly constrained due to discont...

Sediment cores retrieved from the Pleistocene Olduvai Basin by the Olduvai Gorge Coring Project (OGCP) provide a high-resolution record of tuffs and other volcaniclastic deposits, together with a lacustrine sedimentary record full of paleoenvironmental indicators. Correlating tuffs between the cores and outcrops at Olduvai, where these tuffs are id...

The analysis of geochemical palaeoclimate and palaeosalinity proxy elements Ti, Mg, and Al, derived from X-ray fluorescence (XRF) scans of Olduvai Beds I and II from Olduvai Gorge Coring Project (OGCP) borehole Cores 2A and 3A, provides a record of cyclic variation between ~1.3 Ma and ~2.0 Ma. The boreholes were drilled into the depocentre of the O...

This chapter will consider the origins, evolution and adaptive significance of the Acheulean Industrial Complex, based upon experimental replicative and functional studies. It is argued here that the Acheulean emerged as a response to large-mammal carcass acquisition and butchery, where larger, heavier and more ergonomic butchery tools with long, s...

Olduvai Gorge is renowned for discoveries of hominin fossils and tools in a well-resolved sedimentary context, representing one of the foremost sites in East Africa that has afforded critical evidence of hominin evolution. In 2014, the Olduvai Gorge Coring Project (OGCP) recovered the first deep sediment cores from this location. These cores provid...

A 5.6-km-long line of refraction and reflection seismic data spanning the Pliocene-Pleistocene fill of the Olduvai Basin, Tanzania is presented. The line is oriented along a northwest-southeast profile through the position of Olduvai Gorge Coring Project (OGCP) Borehole 2A. Our aims are to (1) delineate the geometry of the basin floor by tracing be...

Several hypotheses invoke climatic variability as a driving force for hominin evolution. Thus, high-resolution records of climate and environmental variability from anthropologically significant locations can help test these hypotheses. Sedimentary sequences recovered by the Olduvai Gorge Coring Project (OGCP) help evaluate climatic and environment...

The Olduvai Gorge of northern Tanzania contains an important record of early hominin fossils and artifacts dating from the Plio-Pleistocene. Situated on the western edge of the East African Rift, the Olduvai Gorge is carved into the Serengeti Plain of East Africa where late Cenozoic environmental fluctuations in East Africa are thought to influence...

Over the past century, numerous discoveries throughout East Africa have advanced our understanding of hominin evolution and provided substantive evidence that climatic and environmental variability played a critical role in evolutionary developments. Stratigraphic records with high temporal resolution aid in testing evolutionary hypotheses that inv...

This paper focuses on the empirical evidence for the cognitive abilities of early hominins of the Oldowan Industrial Complex (c. ≥2.6 to 1.4 Mya) on the African continent. It profiles various researchers’ approaches to and inferences about the cognitive abilities of Oldowan (Mode 1) toolmakers, based on the excavated archaeological evidence, primat...

The Middle Awash region of Ethiopia contains a rich record of Acheulean occupation spanning from Early Pleistocene times through much of the Middle Pleistocene. Here we will present an overview of some of the major reported features of the Acheulean archaeological record of the Middle Awash (Clark et al., 1994; de Heinzelin et al., 2000) and compar...

The rich record of vertebrate, hominin and archaeological remains recovered from Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania stands in stark contrast to the largely unexplored macroinvertebrate record from the region. Here we examine fossil malacofauna from Olduvai Gorge, inclusive of new discoveries and previous reports, and survey their potential as paleo...

Over the past century, extensive studies in East Africa have yielded an unprecedented wealth of information that has shaped our understanding of hominin evolution, including evidence for the critical role played by climatic and environmental variability. Testing such hypotheses benefits from access to more complete and detailed stratigraphic record...

The profound reliance of the human species on tools for its survival and adaptation is unique in the animal world. Prehistoric evidence for tool use as an adaptive strategy in human evolution extends back at least 3.3 million years, when stone tools began to be found at prehistoric sites in Africa in regions containing fossils of early bipedal ance...

Twin Rivers Kopje, Zambia is a Middle and Later Stone Age site first excavated by J. Desmond Clark that has yielded extensive evidence of mineral pigment collection and use dating to as old as 300,000 years ago. In this study, we sampled pigment sources within 25 km of Twin Rivers for digital colorimetry and trace element fingerprinting using Laser...

Twin Rivers Kopje, located southwest of Lusaka, Zambia, is a Middle Stone Age site containing the oldest Lupemban Industry deposits in Central Africa, dating to approximately 300-140 ka. First excavated by J. Desmond Clark, more recent excavations by Lawrence Barham yielded extensive evidence of mineral pigment collection in Lupemban and younger co...

Twin Rivers Kopje is a Middle and Later Stone Age archaeological site located 24 km southwest of Lusaka, Zambia and contains the oldest Lupemban Industry deposits in Central Africa, dating to approximately 300 – 140 ka during the Middle Pleistocene. The site was first excavated by J. Desmond Clark in 1954-56; more recent excavations by Lawrence Bar...

The evolution of human technology has entailed profound yet gradual changes in our technological systems that have essentially co-evolved with changes in ancestral human biological forms. The two-and-a-half million year old Paleolithic archeological record shows a gradual increase in technological, behavioral, and presumably cognitive abilities in...

When considered in the context of animal evolution, the course of human evolution has produced a very unusual species, a profoundly technological organism that has adapted to virtually every biome on our planet through the mediation of material culture. Through the use of tools and technology, materials external to our biological selves that we hav...

This chapter will discuss the relationships between hominin brain evolution (encephalization, reorganization) and the prehistoric archaeological record, most notably prehistoric technological material culture and behavioral patterns, to assess the cognitive capabilities evident within different grades of hominins through time. Seven time intervals,...

We bring together the quite different kinds of evidence available from palaeoanthropology and primatology to better understand the origins of Plio-Pleistocene percussive technology. Accumulated palaeoanthropological discoveries now document the Oldowan Complex as the dominant stone tool making culture between 2.6–1.4 Ma, the earlier part of this co...

The Oldowan was the term first coined by Louis Leakey to describe the world's earliest stone industries, named after the famous site of Olduvai (formerly Oldoway) Gorge in Tanzania. The Oldowan Industrial Complex documents the first definitive evidence of early hominin culture as well as the earliest known archaeological record. This review examine...

The turn of the twenty-first century has seen a new era in the cognitive and brain sciences that allows us to address the age-old question of what it means to be human from a whole new range of different perspectives. Our knowledge of the workings of the human brain increases day by day and so does our understanding of the extended, distributed, em...

This chapter emphasizes the importance of actualistic studies (studies of modern phenomena to gain a better understanding of phenomena in the prehistoric past) in Early Stone Age research, personally drawing on over three decades of research. This retrospective of research includes experimental archaeological studies of stone artifact manufacture a...

Variation in knapping skill is a potential source of variability in Oldowan artifact assemblages thought to have important cognitive, behavioral and evolutionary implications. However, a uniform method for assessing Oldowan knapping skill has yet to be adopted. Research presented here builds upon previous experimental and archaeological work in pur...

Archaeological and palaeontological evidence from the Early Stone Age (ESA) documents parallel trends of brain expansion and technological elaboration in human evolution over a period of more than 2Myr. However, the relationship between these defining trends remains controversial and poorly understood. Here, we present results from a positron emiss...

The Paleolithic, or Old Stone Age, comprises over 99 % of human technological history and spans a time range from 2.6 Ma (the earliest recognizable stone tools and archaeological record) to 10,000 years ago (the end of the last ice age). There are three major stages of the Paleolithic: (1) The Early Paleolithic which includes the following: (a) the...

A recent striped hyena den was excavated in the eastern desert of Jordan to examine taphonomic patterning in the bone assemblage. A total of 4,847 specimens of bones and teeth was recovered from a 16 m2 excavation, with the majority of these (94.7%) buried to a depth of up to 20 cm. While large and even complete bones dominated the surface assembla...

This chapter will present an overview of the Oldowan Industrial Complex (hereafter referred to as the Oldowan), discussing its definition, its chronological and geographic context, the nature of the Oldowan archaeological record, contemporaneous hominins, key issues, and recent trends in research over the past few decades. This introduction will pr...

This chapter will present an overview of the Oldowan Industrial Complex (hereafter referred to as the Oldowan), discussing its definition, its chronological and geographic context, the nature of the Oldowan archaeological record, contemporaneous hominins, key issues, and recent trends in research over the past few decades. This introduction will pr...

An experimental program was designed to compare and contrast the stone tool-making skills of modern African apes (bonobos or Pan paniscus), of prehistoric toolmakinghominins from the earliest known Palaeolithic sites at Gona, Ethiopia (sites EG 10 and EG 12) dating to approximately 2.6 million years ago (possibly Australopithecusgarhi), and of mode...

Functional brain imaging technologies provide human origins researchers with the unique opportunity to examine the actual neural substrates of evolutionarily significant behaviors. This pilot study extends previous brain imaging research on stone toolmaking (Stout et al., 2000; Stout, this volume) by using Positron Emission Tomography (PET) to comp...

In attempting to understand the course of human evolution and the nature of hominid adaptation over the past few million years, it is necessary to consider prevailing evidence from all parts of the world. Eastern Asia provides a range of important questions and challenges with regard to this evolutionary puzzle. Although evidence for earlier ape ev...

Acheulean occurrences investigated in the Middle Awash span from the later Early Pleistocene (starting approximately I million years ago), to the earlier Middle Pleistocene (above and below tuff dated to 640,000 years ago), and later Acheulean technologies in the later Middle Pleistocene. Each stage is technologically and typolog­ically distinct. D...

IIn the 140 years since Darwin first presented his paper on evolution by natural selection to the Linnaean Society (1858), a remarkable mass of evidence has been uncovered to docu­ ment the biological and cultural evolution of the human lineage. This chapter focuses on the archaeology of our earliest ancestors, tracing their emergence as bipedal ho...

This study introduces to archaeology a new experimental technique for examining the relationship between stone tool-making and brain function. The principal focus of this exploratory study was the development of effective methods for the identification and examination of the regions of the modern human brain recruited during the manufacture of simp...

Around two-and-a-half million years ago, some hominid populations in Africa began to modify stones and bones in a manner that can be recognized by prehistorians as artifacts, and, by definition, produced the earliest identifiable archaeological record. It is likely that earlier hominid groups also may have had relatively rich tool-using behavioral...

In the 140 years since Darwin first presented his paper on evolution by natural selection to the Linnaean Society (1858), a remarkable mass of evidence has been uncovered to docu­ ment the biological and cultural evolution of the human lineage. This chapter focuses on the archaeology of our earliest ancestors, tracing their emergence as bipedal hon...

A long-term collaborative study by palaeolithic archaeologists and cognitive psychologists has continued in its investigations into the stone tool-making and tool-using abilities of a captive bonobo (a 180 pound male, named Kanzi, aged 12 years at the time of experiments reported here). A major focus of this study has been examination of the lithic...

The activity of 17 hand muscles was monitored by electromyography (EMG) in three subjects during hard hammer percussion manufacture of Oldowan tools. Two of the subjects were archaeologists experienced in the replication of prehistoric stone tools. Simultaneous videotapes recorded grips associated with the muscle activities. The purpose of the stud...

At some Early Palaeolithic sites (e.g. Ain Hanech, Algeria and el ’Ubeidiya, Israel), archaeologists have uncovered interesting and enigmatic artefact forms that have received special attention. These are the faceted limestone “spheroids” (sometimes called “boules à facettes” or “boules polyédriques”). These artefacts, usually between 5 and 10cm in...

We report on experimental and chemical investigation of bamboo and bone residues on used and unused modern stone tools. Flakes used were manufactured from a chert nodule and employed in three ways: splitting of bamboo, scraping and splintering of bone; others were left unused. Specimens were examined using light microscopy, SEM, and EDS elemental a...

A Paleoindian campsite has been uncovered in stratified prehistoric deposits in Caverna da Pedra Pintada at Monte Alegre in the Brazilian Amazon. Fifty-six radiocarbon dates on carbonized plant remains and 13 luminescence dates on lithics and sediment indicate a late Pleistocene age contemporary with North American Paleoindians. Paintings, triangul...

Fossils and artifacts recovered from the middle Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar depression sample the Middle Pleistocene transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens. Ar/Ar ages, biostratigraphy, and tephrachronology from this area indicate that the Pleistocene Bodo hominid cranium and newer specimens are approximately 0.6 million years old. Only O...

A long-term collaborative study by palaeolithic archaeologists and cognitive psychologists has continued in its investigations into the stone tool-making and tool-using abilities of a captive bonobo (a 180 pound male, named Kanzi, aged 12 years at the time of experiments reported here). A major focus of this study has been examination of the lithic...