The Olduvai Gorge Project
The Olduvai Paleonthropology and Paleoecology Project (TOPPP)
TOPPP’s work at Olduvai Gorge started in 2006. Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo (Complutense University, Madrid, Spain) and Audax Mabulla (University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania) started the project with a team formed by several professional researchers from various fields. The acronym for the team (TOPPP, The Olduvai Paleoanthropological and Paleoecological Project) was adopted in 2007. In 2009, Enrique Baquedano, from the Regional Archaeological Museum of Madrid, also joined as co-PI. In 2017, Charles Egeland (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA) and Agness Gidna (National Museum of Tanzania) joined them as co-PIs.
The reason for starting field research at Olduvai was the result of the thorough taphonomic study that TOPPP members carried out on the collections of the classical Olduvai sites excavated by M. Leakey. As a result a book was published: Deconstructing Olduvai. New questions emerged after the study of these collections and to answer them it became necessary approach some of the main Olduvai sites with renewed excavations by applying new techniques that were not available almost 50 years ago when M. Leakey excavated them. The initial interest of TOPPP rested on the re-excavation of the Olduvai Bed I sites, which had remained unattended for almost half a century after their excavation by M. Leakey, and these goals expanded to include some upper Bed II sites which are crucial to understand hominin behavior in the transition from Oldowan to Acheulian.
Current research involves state-of-the-art techniques at some of the most relevant Olduvai sites (“FLK Zinj”, “PTK”, “FLK North”, “SHK”, “TK”, “BK”, “FLK West”), combining open-air excavation and landscape archaeology to understand early human behavior. A first stage of TOPPP´s research at Olduvai was published in a special issue of Quaternary Research in 2010.
Recent research has been published in Boreas and Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology and Paleoecology in 2017.
Deconstructing Olduvai
Visit the Amazon bookstore and take a look at "Deconstructing Olduvai - Quaternary research"
Book Review by Amazon.com
From the reviews: "The book is divided into 16 chapters. … The monograph is data-rich, with abundant tables for each studied strata listing species and skeletal part representation, as well as graphical summaries of the locations of each individual surface modification (whether by hominin or carnivore) on bovid long bones. … Deconstructing Olduvai is an important paleoanthropological contribution … ." Christian A. Tryon, Journal of Mammalian Evolution, 2008. "This volume provides a fresh look at an old issue – i.e. that hominins were primary agents in the formation of these sites – and suggests that site formation is heterogeneous and complicated during Bed I times at Olduvai Gorge." Journal of Human Evolution, 31 August 2009.
You may visit the Amazon store to purchase "Deconstructing Olduvai" online.
Stone Tools and Fossil Bones: Debates in the Archaeology of Human Origins
Book description
The stone tools and fossil bones from the earliest archaeological sites in Africa have been used over the past fifty years to create models that interpret how early hominins lived, foraged, behaved, and communicated, and how early and modern humans evolved. In this book, an international team of archaeologists and primatologists examines early Stone Age tools and bones and uses scientific methods to test alternative hypotheses that explain the archaeological record. By focusing on both lithics and faunal records, this volume presents the most holistic view to date of the archaeology of human origins.You may visit the Amazon store to purchase "Stone Tools and Fossil Bones" online.