ANTA01H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Taphonomy, Hominini, Bipedalism
Document Summary
Protohominin: the earliest members of the hominin lineage, as yet only poorly represented in the fossil record; thus, the reconstruction of their structure and behaviour is largely hypothetical. Protohominin may have carried sharp stones, pieces of wood etc: we would expect them to display behaviors similar to chimpanzees. Paleoanthropologist task to recover and interpret clues left behind by hominin. Early hominins attracted to stones which are easy to find today. Faunal remains help figure out what environment the hominin lived in preserved as fossils. A taphonomist studies the processes of sedimentation, the action of streams, preservation properties of bone, and carnivore disturbance factors. Taphonomy of site must be determined to understand how site formed over time and if its present state is primary or secondary context: context: the environmental setting where an archaeological trace is found. A primary context is the setting in which the archaeological trace was originally deposited.
