Corey Johnson
My research focuses on the apparent absence of hominin large cutting tool (LCT; aka Acheulean handaxe) technology during the Early Pleistocene in East Asia between ~1.7 and ~0.9 Ma by asking if there is corresponding evidence of low lithic productivity, utility, and transport in the region during this time. From an ecological perspective Early Pleistocene LCT technology was one aspect of a behavioral package that emphasized increased lithic productivity, utility, and transport, and the appearance of this behavioral package shortly after ~2 Ma is thought to have been related to evidence for increased hominin dietary reliance on animal tissues, increased cooperative behavior, increased brain and body size, increased foraging ranges, and changes in life history. However, the geographic tempo of these changes and their underlying evolutionary mechanisms are still coming to be understood and several problems with this picture still require explanation. One major problem comes from the Early Pleistocene record of East Asia, wherein LCTs are not associated with relatively large brained and large bodied fossil hominin populations until ~800,000 years after they first expanded into the region. To address this problem, I investigate the Early Pleistocene archaeological record of Nihewan Basin, China, using a techno-economic approach that reconstructs reduction sequences and measures productivity and utility parameters within and between lithic assemblages which pre-date the earliest LCTs in East Asia in order to analyze hominin technological behavior during this time at a regional scale. The results are combined with other lines of scientific evidence in order to reconstruct a clearer picture of Early Pleistocene hominin paleoecology at Nihewan, and advance our knowledge of general hominin paleobiology and lithic technology in East Asia during the Early Pleistocene.
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