ABSTRACT
Plio-Pleistocene archaeological ‘sites’, or concentrations of debris, have usually been interpreted to be the result of various processual phenomena. The most common interpretation is that stone and bone accumulations are predominately the result of hominid behaviour. Based on various processual findings, a current popular archaeology text book states that, ‘We know that the hominids transported toolmaking stone and portions of animal carcasses from one place to another…. All archaeology currently tells us is that the early Olduvai sites were places to which stone and food resources were carried’ (Pagan 1992:105). In contrast, some maintain that accumulations are not the result of hominid behaviour, and thus they cannot be used to reconstruct early ways of life (Binford 1981; Stern 1993). Other interpretations of the early archaeological record have shown that this interpretive dichotomy is likely to be simplistic. More realistic is that geomorphological, taphonomic and hominid behaviours interact to produce various site conditions relating to depositional and postdepositional processes (e.g. Behrensmeyer 1983; Isaac 1983; Potts 1984; Bunn and Kroll 1986; Schick 1986; Toth 1987; Goldberg et al. 1993; Paddayya and Petraglia 1993; Petraglia and Potts 1994). Therefore, it is now recognized that archaeological sites vary considerably as a consequence of the multiple processes that interact to deposit the material that will later be recovered in excavation. Moreover, once deposited, material remains are variably preserved by natural factors, such as disturbance by moving water after deposition. This chapter presents the results of a study carried out at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. A main conclusion of this study is that even fluvially disturbed accumulations of archaeological debris can offer evidence of important hominid behaviour patterns. The study provides evidence for hominid selection of a certain category and size of stone raw material, and its manufacture and intentional transport of stone from one place to another. The application of intentional choice in selection of tool type for future use by hominids, followed by their transport, indicates that relatively complex thought processes were at work that could be characterized as typically human as opposed to pongid. This analytical approach
to archaeological materials has global relevance to the study of both site formation processes and human behavioural evolution in a variety of contexts.
