Specialties/Interests:
Paleolithic archaeology
The evolution of culture and the origins of symbolism
Zooarchaeology (the archaeology of animal bones)
Current/Past Research: Dr. Chase's primary research at the present time involves the origins and evolution of human culture. He notes: "There is a fundamental difference between humans and other species. We humans allow cultural ideas - values, rules, etc. - to govern our behavior as individuals. Because these are created by society as a whole, they give society a control over us that is not found in any other species. Because this phenomenon is fundamental to the human way of life, archaeologists must understand it in order to understand human evolution. It also raises issues that involve primatology, human paleontology, evolutionary biology, and archaeology."
He recently published a book on the subject, The Emergence of Culture: The Origins of a Uniquely Human Way of Life (Springer, New York, 2006) for archaeologists and physical anthropologists working in the field of human evolution. He is now researching how culture and the mind of the individual are related, and on how both interacted during the course of human evolution.
He is also investigating how two apparently completely unrelated kinds of "culture" work together in human life. Culture is both particles of information or behavior passed from one individual to another through teaching and learning, and at the same time something that is created by the interactions of individuals and that transcends the individual. Both phenomena are central to the human way of life, but how they work together has never been studied.
A second line of research is the archaeological evidence for the origins of symbolism, from burials to art to style in artifacts. With April Nowell (a Penn PhD. now on the faculty of the University of Victoria) he intends to summarize, describe and analyze the evidence in a way that makes it accessible to interested lay people and to researchers in other fields (such as linguistics and psychology). The project includes explaining the necessary background information, including a discussion of all the usually unvoiced philosophical and scientific assumptions that shape archaeologists' interpretations.
Dr. Chase has excavated several sites in France and has studied the animal bones from these and other sites. He is currently involved in publication of recent excavations at the site of Fontéchevade. Penn Museum and the University of Perpignan excavated this cave in southwestern France made famous by the discovery during previous excavations of a scrap of frontal bone (the bone of the forehead) that apparently belonged to a modern human, but that was also apparently much older than any modern human found in Europe. The re-excavation of the site led to two important conclusions: first, the site is much more complicated than previous excavators believed, with much more disturbance and mixing of the sediments. Second, the scrap of bone was much more recent than they believed as well. Funding for the Fontéchevade project was provided by Penn Museum, the National Science Foundation, and the Leakey Foundation.
Dr. Dibble has been directing excavations for the past 20 years at several Paleolithic
sites in France, including Combe-Capelle bas, Cagny-l'Epinette, and Fontéchevade.
Currently he is directing the excavation of the site of Pech de l'Aze
IV, a Middle Paleolithic site in the Dordogne, France, with funding from
the National Science Foundation and the Leakey Foundation. Excavations
began at the site in 2003. He
is also co-Principal Investigator of a project entitled "The Abydos
Survey of Prehistoric Sites," in Middle Egypt. Ongoing research interests
include the modeling of stone tool manufacturing processes, further development
of computer-aided field and analytical techniques, and research on the
nature of stone tool assemblage variability and the evolution of human
culture. He is the author of ten books and over eighty research articles,
and he is currently the editor of the journal PaleoAnthropology.
Links: http://www.OldStoneAge.com
(up-to-date
background on past and current research, reprints, and free copies of
software)
Pech de l'Aze
IV Photo:
Dr. Harold Dibble (right) at work analyzing paleolithic artifacts inside
a cave at an excavation site in France, 1997.
Dr. Philip
G. Chase
Dr.
Harold Dibble