PALEOANTHROPOLOGY FIELDSCHOOL AT SWARTKRANS CAVE, SOUTH AFRICA

June 15 – July 15, 2015

(http://www.studyabroad.wisc.edu/programs/program.asp?program_id=246)

This four week program offers students the opportunity to participate in a paleoanthropology fieldschool at the famous fossil hominin locality of Swartkrans, South Africa. Swartkrans, a cave site approximately twenty miles from Johannesburg, is recognized as one of the world’s most important archaeological and fossil localities for the study of human evolution. The site’s geological deposits span millions of years and sample several important events in human evolution. The oldest finds at the site date between 1.9 and 1.0-million-years-old, a time period during which our immediate ancestor, Homo erectus, shared the landscape with the extinct ape-man species Paranthropus robustus. In addition to fossils of these species, Swartkrans also preserves an abundant archaeological record of their behavior, in the form of stone and bone tools, as well as butchered animal bones, and possible evidence of the control of fire by early hominins.  

Fieldschool participants will learn about these fascinating ancestors through a hands-on course that includes instruction in archaeological survey, site mapping, excavation, and field recording, as well as in artifact and fossil analysis (hominin and animal) and laboratory techniques. Fieldwork will be supplemented with occasional lectures, workshops and fossil locality tours with internationally recognized paleoanthropologists working at nearby sites; the group will also participate in a three day, combined ecology safari and Iron Age archaeology tour in Mapungubwe National Park.

The program is directed by Dr. Travis Pickering, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Over his eighteen years of working in South Africa, Professor Pickering has cultivated strong relationships with other researchers and institutions in the area, ensuring that students on this program will see original fossils and artifacts and receive site tours from the primary researchers in the field. The program is very comprehensive and expands beyond the bounds of simply excavating for four weeks at one site.

The course is listed as ANTH 454 (Topics in Biological Anthropology: Fieldschool at Swartkrans Cave, South Africa) and is run through the International Academic Program (IAP) of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  It is a four-week, six-credit course, with an honors option.  Please contact Pickering (tpickering@wisc.edu) or IAP program director Erica Haas-Gallo (haasgallo@studyabroad.wisc.edu; 608-261-1020) for application details and deadlines, course requirements, and information on course fees and credit transfer.