🔥The 9th Round of Easy Loan, Earn $40 Reward is in progress❗️ ⏰ Promotion Period: January 15th - Feburary 15th, 2025 👉 Register now and check more details at gate.io/campaigns/358

Trowels in the ground, we are back at #witberg excavating early #msa and lower artefacts we haven't sampled yet but are in the quarry profile. Excited to finally see what they look like!

Most artefacts are laying flat when we excavate them, but sometimes they are on edge like this #msa retouched flake Lily excavated in Witberg! #quartzitemonday

Today @Preciouschiwax excavated this amazing #msa blade laying flat and ventral (interior) side up! We record the artefact position and upward surface to tell if the artefacts have been flipped and tumbled once they were discarded.

Kids in the field take 2! North of Kuruman team made them each a dig notebook 📒 with a set of daily activities 📝 It helps that we were here last year, so the setting and expectations are familiar. Also: lots of snacks helps 🍬🍪 😆

Sometimes it's nice to look up from excavating and see the vast southern kalahari sky at @tswalu!

The white diatomite coats the surface of the rocks and makes everything look the same, but a spray bottle helps the different stone colours stand out! 🌟

Professor Sally McBrearty was a huge inspiration for me through her amazing research and writing. My condolences to her family, friends, and colleagues.

A beautiful illustration of geographic bias in human evolutionary studies thanks to the compilation of the ROCEEH Out of Africa Database (ROAD) journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…

Ever wonder if the base or tip of unretouched MSA points is more standardized? Check out our (Dr. Jayne Wilkins @Preciouschiwax Anthroinformatics) new paper on MSA point standardization in Lithic Technology - here's a link to the free eprint copy! tandfonline.com/eprint/KK9J3BE…

Bharti Jangra gave an awesome talk at #AAA46 showing a widespread procurement range of diverse raw materials at Ga-Mohana Hill in the Kalahari Basin 👌 Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution Griffith Science & Environment

At #AAA46, Honours student Aidan Hughes presented new experimental results relevant to identifying novices in the archaeological record 👏, initiating an awesome conversation about the topic with loads of good questions. Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution Griffith Science & Environment

Huge congratulations to Courtney McCreery for winning the Best Student Poster Prize at #AAA46 for her experimental study with stone piercing tools! Well done 👏🎉👌 Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution Griffith Science & Environment Griffith University North of Kuruman

New The Conversation - Australia + New Zealand article 🤓! Creating the 3D model for Ga-Mohana Hill in a way that's respectful of its sacredness Proud or this work with Stephen Wessels, Sechaba Maape, Dr Ben Schoville theconversation.com/3d-scanning-we…

Dr. Jayne Wilkins and I wrote a paper looking at some of the contradictions and inconsistencies in how researchers link environment and innovation in human evolution. Check it out open-access in the new journal Quaternary Science Advances! doi.org/10.1016/j.qsa.…

New paper with Dr Ben Schoville 🎉 . Did climate change make humans innovative? Well, it's not an easy question to answer... sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Our 2024 excavations on Tswalu Kalahari Reserve have just begun, watch this space!

We were last at Sonstraal in 2022, and the first step is removing our backfill sandbags. Not the most exciting part of Archaeology but good backfilling protects the site for the future! #acheulean #ESA #MSAtransition

We are busy plotting artefacts at Sonstraal, a new MSA/Acheulean archaeological site on the @tswalu kalahari reserve! Here Kabelo is mapping in a quartzite stone artefact from layers >500,000 years old!

Thank you for featuring our ongoing research at Sonstraal Southern African Archaeology Student Society! Check out their profile to see other awesome ongoing fieldwork in Southern Africa and connect with the next generation of project leaders! ⚒️🪨🙌