The implications of time-averaging for reconstructing the land-use patterns of early tool-using hominids

Abstract Indications that shifts in diet, foraging strategics and land use patterns were driving forces in hominid evolution are largely responsible for archaeologists' longstanding interest in reconstructing the land use patterns of early tool-using hominids. Attempts to reconstruct past land use patterns involve a study of the distribution of material remains through sediments representing different portions of an ancient landscape. Depositional systems play a major role in structuring these types of regional archaeological records. There is, for example, an inverse relationship between the area of an ancient landscape being sampled, the quantity of archaeological debris available for study and the amount of time represented by that debris and its encasing sediments. The micro-stratigraphy and time resolution of a set of archaeological remains in the lower Okote Member of the Koobi Fora Formation are described. It is argued that this record comprises time-averaged palimpsests of debris spanning 65 ± 5 k.y.a. Only by ignoring the time dimension of these data is it possible to invoke interpretive theories that are based on ethnographic scale observations of the interactions between individuals and their environments. It is argued that serious consideration should be given to the suggestion that this is an ontologically singular record of hominid action with the potential to provide an entirely unique perspective on the history of the hominid lineage.