Research Projects

Southern Africa Research

I lead zooarchaeological research as part of collaborative projects investigating cultural transformations in southern Africa over the last 2,000 years. Our work prioritizes local Bantu perspectives to challenge interpretations of African societies based on Western ideologies.

Great Zimbabwe Hill

Great Zimbabwe Project

My research at Great Zimbabwe National Monument reframes understanding of food systems and social organization at Africa's most famous medieval city. Previous interpretations emphasized hierarchical meat distribution, with elites consuming prime cuts of beef while commoners received inferior portions. However, this model reflects Eurocentric assumptions about food quality and political power rather than local approaches to social organization.

My analysis of faunal remains from multiple residential areas reveals widespread cattle consumption throughout the site, with evidence of whole animal slaughter in household contexts rather than centralized butchery. This emphasises community-oriented food sharing rather than class-based restriction, aligning with local Bantu systems where power is distributed among families through complex networks of cooperation and reciprocity.

Current research uses cattle mortality profiles, stable isotope analysis, and cementum annuli studies to reconstruct slaughter seasonality and the communal bases of meat consumption. This work reveals how cattle ownership and community provisioning facilitated social mobility and shifting political allegiances, providing new frameworks for understanding early African urbanism.

Southeastern Zimbabwe

New Bantu Mosaics Project

As work package leader for this major international project, I coordinate zooarchaeological research investigating how Bantu-speaking farmers transformed southern African landscapes over two millennia. Through interdisciplinary analysis of archaeological and bioarchaeological materials from 10 countries across southern Africa, we are tracing the long-term impacts of cultural exchange, animal translocations, and technological innovations.

My research integrates ancient DNA, stable isotopes, and traditional zooarchaeological methods to understand how human-animal relationships evolved as farming communities encountered local hunter-gatherers and pastoralists. By centering local Bantu worldviews in our interpretations, this work contributes crucial insights into cultural heritage while advancing archaeological methods for studying complex societal transformations.

Eastern Uganda Research

Between 2016-2018, I co-directed pioneering fieldwork with Professor Ruth Tibesasa in a previously unexplored region of eastern Uganda, identifying several new Stone Age and Iron Age sites along the Lake Victoria shoreline. Our excavations at Namundiri A, Namaboni B, and Lugala A recovered extensive assemblages that dated between 8,000 and 1,500 years ago, providing crucial insights into long-term cultural and environmental changes in this densely populated region.

Lake Victoria, Uganda

Kansyore Project

The Lake Victoria Basin preserves some of East Africa's earliest pottery and evidence of specialized fishing economies beginning in the early Holocene. These innovations are associated with the Kansyore Later Stone Age tradition, a unique delayed-return foraging system that persisted for ~7,000 years and was characterized by seasonal landscape use, specialized fishing strategies, and extensive ceramic production.

My zooarchaeological and chronological research reveals significant economic reorganization ~5,000 years ago, when Kansyore communities reduced lakeshore reliance and developed specialized river fishing strategies. This shift coincided with increased aridity and the arrival of herders and farmers, demonstrating how environmental change and cultural contact drove adaptation among Indigenous hunter-gatherer groups.

This work challenges assumptions about hunter-gatherer vulnerability to climate change, revealing sophisticated adaptive strategies that enabled long-term resilience in variable environments. Published findings in the Journal of African Archaeology provide new frameworks for understanding human-environment interactions during the mid-Holocene.

Future Conservation Focus

Professor Tibesasa and I are developing an interdisciplinary project to excavate additional threatened lakeshore sites before industrial development destroys them. This rescue archaeology will recover crucial cultural information while supporting grassroots heritage preservation efforts.

Our research provides essential ecological baselines for Lake Victoria conservation initiatives. The region's ecosystems have been dramatically altered since the 1950s Nile perch introduction, which caused mass extinctions of native tilapia species. Archaeological faunal assemblages reveal pre-disturbance biodiversity patterns crucial for restoration planning, demonstrating archaeology's direct relevance for contemporary conservation challenges.

Southern Somalia Research

I study zooarchaeological collections from Later Stone Age hunter-gatherer sites in southern Somalia, providing rare insights into human adaptations over a 20,000-year period of dramatic climatic changes. These sites—Guli Waabayo, Gogoshiis Qabe, and Rifle Range—were excavated in the 1980s before the Somali Civil War and represent some of the only archaeological data available from this region that has been plagued by conflict for decades.

Buur Heybe inselberg cluster, Somalia (image © Steven A. Brandt)

Long-term Resilience in
Semi-Arid Environments

All three sites are located near granitic inselbergs ('buur'), rocky outcrops that support more abundant plant and animal communities than the surrounding arid plains. Spanning the Last Glacial Maximum through the Holocene, occupations at the sites document human survival strategies during extreme environmental fluctuations, from hyper-aridity to periods of increased rainfall.

My analysis of over 130,000 bones from Guli Waabayo reveals remarkable consistency in hunting strategies spanning 20,000 years. Despite major climate changes, inhabitants maintained an intensive focus on dik-dik antelope hunting—small animals (3-6 kg) adapted to inselberg habitats. Evidence of mass kill-off events suggests cooperative net-hunting enabled sustainable food resources for millennia.

Published research in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences and Quaternary International demonstrates that organized cooperative labor in the Horn of Africa extends several millennia earlier than previously recognized. This work challenges narratives about hunter-gatherer vulnerability, revealing sophisticated socioeconomic strategies for maintaining community resilience in environmentally challenging regions.

Paleoclimate Integration

Collaborative isotopic analysis of ancient warthog teeth reconstructs past rainfall patterns in southern Somalia. This work reveals decreased precipitation and greater seasonality during the Late Pleistocene, followed by more consistent Holocene rainfall. This paleoclimatic framework contextualizes human adaptive strategies and demonstrates an integrated approach to understanding human-environment interactions.

Cultural Heritage Preservation

My work in Somalia contributes crucial documentation of the region's deep cultural heritage, providing some of the only available information about prehistoric life in this war-torn region. Our forthcoming comprehensive review will synthesize findings across multiple analytical approaches, preserving knowledge of communities whose descendants continue to inhabit this challenging landscape.

Central Sudan Research

I collaborate with an international team investigating societal responses to Holocene climate fluctuations in Sudan's Middle Nile Valley. This research addresses fundamental questions about the transition from hunting to herding during Africa's earliest food production experiments.

Shaqadud Box Canyon, Sudan

Zooarchaeological Studies

My analysis focuses on how human-animal relationships evolved as the climate changed from arid to wet conditions and back again. By examining hunting versus herding strategies, habitat reconstruction through taxonomic composition, and economic differences between riverine and inland adaptations, this work reveals diverse pathways to climate resilience in northeastern Africa.

Collaborative isotopic analysis will reconstruct local rainfall patterns, providing integrated datasets linking environmental transformation to economic reorganization. This research establishes baselines for understanding how future climate change might impact arid African ecosystems and communities.

African Humid Period Transformations

During the early Holocene African Humid Period (~13,000-6,000 years ago), shifting monsoon systems transformed the Sahara from desert to grassland, enabling human expansions into previously uninhabitable regions. Stone Age hunter-gatherers developed Africa's earliest pottery and eventually began to experiement with wild animal management and breeding. Over time, some groups transitioned to pastoralism while others maintained foraging economies, creating complex cultural mosaics.

Our team excavated sites at Jebel Shaqadud (semi-arid Sahel) and Jebel Sabaloka (Nile Valley) between 2011-2023, recovering extensive archaeological assemblages now housed in Prague. These materials span the transition into the African Humid Period through its end and returning aridity, when populations concentrated around the Nile and developed increasingly complex societies.

Contemporary Relevance

Climate projections predict increasing aridity and rising temperatures across northern Africa over the next 50 years, threatening food and water security in regions where rainfall is already sparse. By documenting how past societies successfully navigated similar transitions, this research provides frameworks for modeling complex relationships between climate and human adaptation in vulnerable landscapes.