Department Talk: Dr. Amanda Leiss
Our next Department Talk will be on Thursday, Nov. 10 at 12pm in PLS 505. Dr. Amanda Leiss will speak on “Faunal evidence for paleoenvironmental change coincident with the emergence of Acheulean technology at Gona”.
The Gona research area in Ethiopia has the longest continuous record of Early Stone Age (ESA) archaeology in eastern Africa as well as the earliest Oldowan (2.58 Ma) and Acheulean (~1.6 Ma) stone tools in the record as well as abundant fossils. The emergence of the double-edged hand axes and large cutting tools that define the Acheulean is associated with the evolution of Homo erectus and complex cognitive abilities such as the standardization of shape and preconception of form. These adaptations are hypothesized to have occurred in the context of increased savannah grasslands in eastern Africa. I tested this hypothesis using a multiproxy analysis of paleoenvironmental data from ~3-1 Million Years ago and found an abundance of grass resources at Gona with an increase in the abundance of (or reliance of hominins on) grass resources associated with the emergence of the Acheulean at Gona.
Amanda Leiss is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology. She is a biological anthropologist with a focus in paleoecology and taphonomy. Her research interests are human-environmental interactions and the origins of meat-eating and hunting behavior in hominins. Her dissertation tested the hypothesis that early stone age technological change occurred in the context of increasing savannah grasslands in eastern Africa through multiple proxies. She is currently working on publications, continuing her research with the Gona Project in Ethiopia and the Baringo Project in Kenya, and expanding to work on camelid isotopes from the Chawin Punta Project in the Andes, Peru.