Investigating Human Coastal Migration Through Exploration of a Paleolithic Site

通过探索旧石器时代遗址来调查人类沿海迁徙

• 批准号: 1400473
• 负责人: Amanuel Beyin
• 金额: $ 3.41万
• 依托单位: University of Southern Indiana
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-02-01 至 2016-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1400473&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Investigating; Human; Coastal; Migration; Through

The fundamental goal of this project is to gain insight into how humans spread from an originally limited region within Africa to a worldwide distribution which includes all continents. Understanding how this process - especially in its earliest stages - took place has the potential to shed light on basic human adaptations.With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Amanuel Beyin and an international team of colleagues from the US and the Sudan will conduct one season of high-risk archaeological exploration along the Sudanese Red Sea coast (northeast Africa) to locate prehistoric sites associated with early human use of coastal resources and dispersal events out of Africa. There is an emerging anthropological consensus on the first appearance of early modern humans in Africa around 200,000 years ago, and their subsequent dispersals to Europe and Asia. However, there is disagreement about the specific routes along which early humans dispersed out of Africa (e.g. the Sinai Peninsula vs the Bab al Mandab strait). The possibility of early humans using coastal landscapes as potential dispersal conduits during their migration out of Africa and beyond is receiving increasing support among researchers in recent years. As a region featuring a long and heterogeneous coastal strip, the proposed study area in the Sudanese Red Sea zone represents a vital region for assessing current hypotheses concerning early human coastal migration out of Africa. The proposed high-risk archaeological exploration will test the hypothesis that the Red Sea basin served as a viable refugium and dispersal corridor for early humans. The nature of the research at this stage requires finding paleoanthropological sites, and describing their geological settings and archaeological contents (such as types of artifacts and fossils and their distribution patterns). To achieve these goals, the proposed research will employ vehicle-assisted pedestrian surveys (field team walking along established transects), recording artifact and fossil concentrations with a GPS, and test excavations at selected stratified sites. Field data compiled during this pilot survey will be entered into a Geographic Information System database specifically designed to accommodate site proveniences, artifact/fossil density, locations of important environmental features (river channels, shorelines and stable plateau) and lithic raw material locations. The results of this pilot work will enable us to pursue a long-term, interdisciplinary fieldwork in this important region. The intellectual merits of this high-risk exploration are that, by documenting new prehistoric coastal sites from a less explored part of the Red Sea basin, the research will generate fresh archaeological data with which to clarify: a) the role that the African side of the Red Sea basin played in human adaptations, survival and dispersals out of Africa, b) possible demographic and cultural connections among hominid groups who occupied northeastern Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and Southwest Asia and, c) compare the nature of prehistoric human adaption there with neighboring regions. In a wider geographic context, this research will contribute to global theoretical debates surrounding the geographic contexts of early human dispersals out of Africa and the role of coastal habitats in stimulating hominid evolution, adaptations and dispersals. The broader impact of the project is that, it will contribute to advancing greater international paleoanthropological research collaboration among researchers - including two ethnic minorities in the discipline - from two US institutions and two Sudanese universities. In the future, it will provide diverse research opportunities for students from both American and African institutions.

该项目的基本目标是深入了解人类如何从非洲最初有限的地区传播到包括所有大陆在内的全球分布。了解这一过程 - 尤其是在最早的阶段 - 如何阐明了基本的人类适应。与国家科学基金会的支持，阿曼纽尔·贝恩博士以及美国和苏丹的国际同事团队将进行一个沿苏丹红海（东北非洲）沿苏丹红海（东北非洲）的高风险考古探索，以将较早的事件与人类的销售者相关联。大约在200，000年前，非洲早期现代人类的首次露面以及随后分散到欧洲和亚洲的首次露面。但是，关于早期人类从非洲驱散的特定路线存在分歧（例如，西奈半岛与Bab al Mandab海峡）。近年来，早期人类使用沿海景观作为潜在的散布管道的可能性可能是近年来研究人员在研究人员中获得越来越多的支持。作为一个具有长长且异构沿海地带的地区，苏丹红海地区的拟议研究区是评估有关早期人类沿海迁徙非洲早期假设的至关重要地区。拟议的高风险考古探索将检验以下假设：红海盆地是早期人类的可行避难和分散走廊。在此阶段，研究的性质需要查找古人类学遗址，并描述其地质环境和考古内容（例如文物和化石的类型及其分布模式）。为了实现这些目标，拟议的研究将采用车辆辅助的行人调查（沿既定的横断面行走），使用GPS记录工件和化石浓度，并在选定的分层地点进行测试发掘。在此试点调查中汇编的现场数据将进入一个专门设计的地理信息系统数据库，该数据库专门为可容纳现场易用，人工制品/化石密度，重要环境特征（河流通道，海岸线和稳定高原）以及岩石原料位置的位置。这项试点工作的结果将使我们能够在这个重要地区进行长期，跨学科的野外工作。 The intellectual merits of this high-risk exploration are that, by documenting new prehistoric coastal sites from a less explored part of the Red Sea basin, the research will generate fresh archaeological data with which to clarify: a) the role that the African side of the Red Sea basin played in human adaptations, survival and dispersals out of Africa, b) possible demographic and cultural connections among hominid groups who occupied northeastern Africa, the Arabian Peninsula和西南亚和，c）将那里的史前人类适应性与邻近地区进行比较。在更广泛的地理环境中，这项研究将有助于围绕非洲早期分散的地理环境以及沿海栖息地在刺激人类进化，适应和分散方面的作用的全球理论辩论。该项目的更广泛的影响是，它将有助于从两家美国机构和两所苏丹大学中推进研究人员之间的更大国际古人类学研究合作 - 包括该学科的两个少数民族。将来，它将为来自美国和非洲机构的学生提供多种研究机会。