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Part III. Regional Studies in the Gregory Rift Valley |
The Olorgesailie Formation consists of sedimentary deposits which were laid down during the Middle Pleistocene in a small basin of internal drainage on the foor of the Gregory Rift Valley 65 kms south-west of Nairobi. The particular interest of the beds stems firstly from the fact that they preserve a rich and abundant archaeological record of the life patterns and handicrafts of early man; and secondly from the fact that the excellent exposure of the stratigraphy makes it possible to work out the history of sedimentation and to reconstruct the conditions under which the beds were deposited.
For various reasons, Olorgesailie has come to be one of the best-known sites in the Rift Valley; this is partly due to the fact that it was discovered at a relatively early stage in the development of Quaternary studies in East Africa, and partly owing to the fact that access to Olorgesailie from Nairobi is easy by comparison with many other East African sites. However, the fame of Olorgesailie is mostly attributable to the spectacular abundance of well-preserved early stone age artefacts that occur there.
The site has been known for more than 30 years (see below) and yet for various reasons no comprehensive account of either the archaeology or the geology has hitherto appeared. A monograph on the prehistory is now in press (Isaac, in press) and this volume provides a welcome opportunity to present an outline of the stratigraphy and a palaeoenvironemental interpretation. This accompanies a contoured 1:10000 geological map of
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This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
This report accompanies the 1: 10,000 geological map surveyed by ROBERT M. SHACKLETON
