The Buia sedimentary basin, in the Eritrean Danakil Depression, yielded over the past years a number of rich fossil outcrops dated to the final phases of the Early Pleistocene.
In 2020 we have the double goal to continue the exploration of Mulhuli Amo in order to widen the behavioural understanding of this early phase of the Early Pleistocene, and to start systematic exploration of more recent phases of the history of the humankind. In fact, Eritrea, and the Buia area in particular, is located in a pivotal area for the emergence and first expansion of Homo sapiens. The Eritrea is in fact between the Ethiopia and the Sudan, and faces the Saudi Arabia: an ideal country where to test all the models for the Homo sapiens birth and expansion in and out of Est Africa. A cognitive aspect will also be introduced in the project, adding experimental and behavioural data from primatology and experimental archaeology. Archaeological evidence consists in Middle Stone Age lithics and possibly, fossils.
Field season 2020 will take place in November- December. The work will be articulated in tasks. The mai focus will be survey of the Buia area basin with particular focus on geological, paleontological, archeaeological and paleo-anthropological aspects linked to the Middle and Upper Pleistocene in order to map the Middle Stone Age evidence.
Excavation will take place in Mulhuli Amo and eventually in newly discovered MSA sites, followed by the analysis of the lithic industries and comparison with other MSA and Acheulean assemblages from East Africa.
The team includes specialists who will allow ancient DNA analyses, the sampling and analysis of palaeobotanical evidence, the experimental analyses to widely asses the cognitive and behavioural aspects of Early Homo.
As anticipated, the 2020 campaign will be focused toward the Middle Pleistocene evidence of the region, looking for an occupational continuity through the Upper Pleistocene in a central area for the emergence of Homo sapiens. In 2020 we have then the double goal to continue the exploration of Mulhuli Amo in order to widen the behavioural understanding the onset of the Early Pleistocene, and to start systematic exploration of more recent phases of the history of the humankind. In fact, Eritrea, and the Buia area in particular, is located in a pivotal area for the emergence and first expansion in and out of Africa of early Homo sapiens [31-32]. The Eritrea is in fact located between the Ethiopia and the Sudan, and faces the Saudi Arabia: an ideal country where to test all the models for the Homo sapiens birth and expansion in and out of Est Africa. This is a potential biogeographic corridor for hominin movement between Africa and Southwest Asia: its long coastal niche once extended into the Danakil Depression made the region a natural destination for hominins dispersing from the interior of East African, in particular for the early inhabitants of the Afar Rift.
Archaeological evidence consists in Early Stone Age (ESA) and Middle Stone Age (MSA) lithics and possibly, fossils. The retrieving of new MSA evidences will allow the direct comparison with other MSA contexts currently investigated by the PI, particularly Gotera, Yabello (Southern Ethiopia) and Al Jamrab (Sudan) [33-35].
The current understanding of the East African paleoenvironment emphasizes the presence of extreme dynamism, in both the Red Sea and the East African rift systems, that contributed to the development of different ecosystems. The variability of the ecosystems was an important factor for shaping the human evolutionary scenario and consequently these two aspects are inexorably linked.
The application, in this project, of new models of paleo-geographical dynamics and their associated ecosystems should substantially contribute to the general understanding of these, to date, still insufficiently understood phenomena.
The discovery, in the 2015 field campaign, of a 800 Ka hominin footprint assemblage at Aalad-Amo positions Buia among the very rare and unique sites capable of giving direct information regarding posture and locomotion. The enlargement of the exposed surface and its in-depth analysis through cutting edge techniques could provide unprecedented information regarding foot anatomy, stature, body mass and locomotor biomechanics of H. erectus/ergaster around 0.8 Ma. In addition, this finding gives scientists critical clues to understanding how hominins behaved and fared in their environment at that time, adding a new piece to the puzzle of human evolution.
The employment of cutting edge techniques will furthermore enable the implementation and detail of the data acquired. Methodologies applied to fossils will include high resolution 3D laser scan images to integrate the microtomographic record and that will therefore render available virtual models for morphometric geometry that could be compared with open access resources (e.g. www.nespos.org) or casts.
We also perform on the extant population genome-wide analyses using next generation sequencing. Through these analyses we will investigate the evolutionary history of these populations. The high amount of data will be processed using dedicated bioinformatic tools.
Finally, the Buia site will be studied under the point of view of cognitive evolution, and cutting edge models will be applied to the human occupation of the area: experiments on the planning and the tool use, and studies on the manipulation of lithic tools associate with cognitive abilities.
This project has the peculiarity to join the expertise of different specialists in order to integrating the bio-evolutionary information with that derived from studies of cultural aspects and of the development of cognitive functions.
[31] Beyin et al 2019 a
[32] Beyin et al 2019 b
[33] Spinapolice et al. 2017
[34] Spinapolice et al. 2018
[35] Carletti et al. 2020