Searching for intra-site spatial patterns in the African Early Acheulean: the lowermost archaeo-units at FLK West (Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania)

FLK West (Olduvai Gorge) constitutes one of the most relevant archeological resources for the study of the Acheulean in East Africa. This site presents a number of unique characteristics that make it an exceptional archeological document: a precise chronological framework, a multi-component site with six different archeological units bearing a rich lithic and faunal record, the oldest association of stone tools and processed fauna, and a well-preserved paleoenvironmental context. For these reasons, FLK West constitutes a remarkable opportunity to undertake a micro-spatial analysis at an archaeo-unit level. This work pursues a first approach to the intra-site study of the archeological associations preserved in the densest patches documented in the lowermost levels (L4 to L6) of the FLK West sequence. For this purpose, a variety of analyses will be considered, including archaeo-stratigraphy, a preliminary refitting program and, more specifically, the inspection of spatial horizontal correlations between archeological remains. The most significant spatial patterns observed point to differences in the distribution of diagnostic Acheulean implements with respect to specimens included in knapping categories and faunal remains. These observations open up the possibility to explore the debated functional meaning of large Acheulean tools from a complementary spatial perspective.