Senior Scientists

John Kappelman, Ph.D.
Biological Anthropologist and Geologist
Department of Anthropology
University of Texas at Austin

I am a professor of anthropology at the University of Texas and serve as co-director of the MSA Project (along with Dr. Lawrence Todd). I am broadly trained in biological anthropology and geology and have conducted research in primate and human evolution, paleoecology, geology, paleomagnetism, and computer imaging, with field projects all across Africa and Asia for the past 35 years. I have worked in Ethiopia since 1992.

My research interests for this Project include the overall behavior of Middle Stone Age humans and reconstructions of the ancient habitats and climates. I am interested in directing undergraduate research projects in the taxonomy of the fossil animals (including the fish) that the MSA people collected, estimates of the body size and diversity of this fauna, the stratigraphy and sedimentology of the archaeological sites and the landscape, how we can use paleomagnetism to understand the controlled use of fire, and controlled experiments with the stone tool artefacts. Some student projects will be field-based while others will combine field-generated data with follow-up study in the National Museum in Addis Ababa or work in the computer lab or paleomagnetism lab at UT Austin.

 

Lawrence Todd, Ph.D.
Archaeologist
Department of Anthropology
Colorado State University

I am Professor Emeritus at Colorado State University and a Research Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin and serve with Dr. Kappelman as co-director of this Project. I have over forty years’ experience in field archaeology of foraging peoples. I specialize in large mammal zooarchaeology/taphonomy and site formational analysis. During the last decade, my focus has expanded to include multi-scale regional survey and excavation projects – an approach referred to as landscape taphonomy that emphasizes the interplay between biological, cultural, and physical processes in forming and interpreting the archaeological record. I participate in the Project as an instructor in archaeological excavation, documentation, survey, and analysis methods. I have been part of the team working in the project area since 2002 and currently split my research time between summers in high elevation portions of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and winter field and lab work in Ethiopia.

 

Mulugeta Feseha, Ph.D.
Geologist
College of Natural Sciences
Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

I am an associate professor in the Paleoanthropology and Paleoenvironment Program at Addis Ababa University. I am trained in geology, GIS, and paleomagnetism. My research focus is on ancient environmental reconstructions, rift geology, sedimentary basin analysis and resource exploration, and the application of GIS and remote sensing in natural resources development and management. More recently I have become interested in natural and cultural tourism resource mapping, tourism product development, and community based ecotourism development and have published several books on these topics.

For the Middle Stone Age program I am interested in supervising students who are interested in a broad range of topics in geology as well as projects in tourism development.

 

Abebe Gatahun, Ph.D.
Fish Systematist and Ecologist
Department of Zoological Sciences
Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

I am an Associate Professor in Aquatic Biology and currently the Chairman of the Department of Zoological Sciences. My specialization and research interest is in the diversity, conservation and utilization of freshwater fishes. For the last 20 years we (together with my graduate students) have conducted research on Ethiopian freshwater fish, especially on the conservation of the unique migratory Labeobarbus spp. of Lake Tana. We have also done some work on the fish of Alatish National Park where the diversity is considerably high and where there is some use of piscicides (natural poisons) by the local people.

I am interested in supervising students in the study of the effects of poisons on fish and the possibility that their use by MSA peoples might be detectable in fossil fish and mollusks. I am also interested in supervising students who are interested in the taxonomy and abundance of modern and fossil fish, with this work being carried out both in the field and in the National Museum in Addis Ababa.

 

Marvin Kay, Ph.D.
Quaternary Archaeologist
Department of Anthropology
University of Arkansas-Fayetteville

My research addresses human adaptation to Quaternary environments.  Working with undergraduate and graduate students and Ethiopian colleagues, I deal with realistic experimental studies of primitive technology and telltale macroscopic and microscopic wear traces, mostly on stone tools.  These studies are fundamental to understanding Middle Stone Age archaeology in Ethiopia, because they provide a comparative analytical basis for understanding the function of ancient stone artifacts.

 

Staci Loewy, Ph.D.
Radiogenic Isotope Geochemist
Department of Geological Sciences
University of Texas at Austin

As a radiogenic isotope geochemist, I use the decay of radioactive elements in natural materials as clocks to determine the ages of those materials. I work with many different types of materials and radioactive parent-daughter element pairs. With the Middle Stone Age NSF REU project, I will be using U-series dating to determine the ages of ostrich egg shell fragments from the research site. Ostrich eggs were a common food source of early humans and the shells may have been used for tools and jewelry. The age of the egg shells found at the archeological site will provide the age of the human activity at that site.

U-series dating uses the radioactive decay of 238U to 230Th. Because the rate of decay is constant through time, we can measure the amount of 238U and the amount of 230Th created by the decay of 238U in the egg shell fragment and can calculate the age of the egg shell, if the system has not been disturbed. In our lab, this dating method is used regularly to date stalagmites, the calcite domes that form from dripping water in caves. However adapting this method to ostrich egg shells has interesting complications. Work of the MSA REU will help to test some of our hypotheses with respect to these complications and attempt to determine the ages of several shell fragments. Students who work on this portion of the project will work with me and Dr. Jay Banner in his clean chemistry laboratory and analyze U and Th isotopes using a TIMS (thermal ionization mass spectrometer) in the Department of Geological Sciences at UT Austin.

 

Gifford Miller, Ph.D.
Geologist
INSTAAR and Geological Sciences
University of Colorado, Boulder

I am a Professor of Geological Sciences and a Fellow of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where I also serve as Associate Director.  My research focuses on utilizing the record of the recent geological past, primarily in hot and cold deserts, to gain a better understanding of Earth’s climate system, and the role of humans in the Earth System.  I have long-standing research programs in the Eastern Canadian Arctic, Australia, Iceland, and Svalbard.

Recognizing the need for improved tools to date events of the recent past, I established a laboratory for amino acid racemization dating, and it was through this tool that I became caught up in the climate and human histories of the world’s hot deserts, beginning with the Sahara Desert, and eventually leading me to Australia in the late 1980s, with active research campaigns since the early 1990s focusing on the pacing of the Australian Summer Monsoon, causes of megafaunal extinction, and the footprints of human colonization. Recently, my research group, building on the Australia experience, expanded our fieldwork to Madagascar, where we are evaluating causes for the extinction of Aepyornis, the giant, 1000 pound Elephant Bird.

Under my direction, students studying the Middle Stone Age will work in my lab and use amino acid racemization on ancient ostrich eggshell to date the human occupation sites.  This work is especially important because many of these sites are older than the limit of carbon-14 dating.

 

Rob Scott Ph.D.
Biological Anthropologist
Paleoecology and Hominin Diet Lab
Center for Human Evolutionary Studies
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

The research focus in my lab is on understanding the diets of our various hominin and hominid ancestors and close relatives. How did foods and ecology create selection pressures and constraints in human evolution? In practice, this means a wide range of work from experimental to comparative. We have done everything from experiments using an in vitro model of human digestion to HRXCT of the internal architecture of jaw bones. In the Middle Stone Age of Ethiopia, research might include scanning cut-marked or tooth-marked bone and distinguishing cut-marks from tooth-marks or analyzing the species and skeletal parts present at a locality to answer questions about subsistence. We could even investigate use-wear on stone tools.
Thus, work could include identification and cataloging collections, scanning and imaging or even some mathematical modeling. Anthropology and archaeology have long borrowed from other disciplines and curious undergraduate researchers from majors as diverse as but not limited to Math, Computer Science, Biology, Archaeology, and Anthropology all may have something to contribute.

 

Neil Tabor, Ph.D.
Sedimentologist and Isotope Geochemist
Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences
Southern Methodist University, Dallas TX

I am a professor of Earth Sciences at Southern Methodist University and I am interested in sedimentology, soils and paleosols (fossilized soils), stable isotope geochemistry, and paleoenvironmental reconstruction. I work across a broad swath of geologic time that covers the past 400 million years, and have conducted field work in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. My research is guided by an overarching principle that a developed understanding of past climate dynamics will inform our concepts and predictions about future climate change.

I have worked on this Project, both in the field and in the lab, since 2007. My work has focused on using stable carbon and oxygen isotopes from the teeth of fossil mammals to reconstruct their diets and, by analyzing these same isotopes from paleosol minerals, to reconstruct the types and ranges of vegetative cover across paleolandscapes. I also have initiated a study of stable isotopes from freshwater mollusks in order to reconstruct late Pleistocene climates around the western lowlands of Ethiopia. Collectively, this research will provide the Project with an opportunity to place the foraging behaviors of Middle Stone Age, early modern humans within a paleoenvironmental and climatic context.

I am interested in supervising students with an interest in reconstructing ancient climates and habitats so that we can better understand the interaction between Middle Stone Age humans and their environments. These people endured at a time when our species began its expansion out of Africa that, eventually, lead us to populate most of the rest of the world.  Students who work with me will collect samples in the field and analyze their samples in my lab at SMU in Dallas.

 

Hong Wang, Ph.D.
Quaternary Geochemist
Illinois State Geological Survey
Prairie Research Institute
Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

My research interest in this project is to develop methodology for accurate ¹⁴C dating on organic remains, (e.g., wood, charcoal, collagen, sediments) and inorganic carbon (e.g., ostrich egg shell, marine and terrestrial animal shells, and tooth enamel apatite). For the archeological chronologies including the Middle Stone Age, which are near the ¹⁴C dating limits, high-temperature pyrolysis technology is developed to convert organic remains into the graphitic-like carbon forms. The graphitic-like carbon is the most resistant to weathering and least likely to be contaminated by active or inert carbon sources. The high-temperature pyrolysis pretreatment on organic remains provides the most reliable ¹⁴C dates for older than 45,000 years BP. Students interested in this topic will study ¹⁴C dating in my lab, and these results are critical for understanding when these foragers lived in East Africa.