Harvard Archaeology Seminar Series Presents:

The Olduvai Paleoanthropology and Paleoecology Project (TOPPP) has uncovered in the past 11 years a series of archaeological sites in Bed I, dating to almost 2 million years ago, with exceptional preservation. These sites are enabling an understanding of the functionality of those sites, why hominins selected specific locations for their central-place behaviors, and is enabling a joint focus, for the first time in several decades, on hominid social and subsistence behaviors. TOPPP has framed this eco-behavioral reconstruction within the most detailed and extensive reconstruction of a paleolandscape for the early Pleistocene. This is uniquely possible at Olduvai Gorge, where several anthropogenic sites occur on the same paleosurface across a landscape, a situation unparalleled for this time period. In addition, TOPPP´s work at later sites in Bed II led to the discovery of the earliest Acheulian at Olduvai Gorge and an understanding of associated foraging behavior. Finally, a series of fossil discoveries also show that at least three different hominins co-existed at Olduvai Gorge at 1.9 million years ago.