Talkin' Tropics

Pamela Akuku is a PhD student at IPHES, or the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution) in Tarragona Spain, and the University of Calgary, Canada. Pam is a Kenyan archaeology interested in taphonomy and taxonomy of African Plio-Pleistocene faunal assemblages, mainly at important paleoanthropological sites like Koobi Fora in Kenya and Oldupai Gorge in Tanzania. She received her bachelor of arts in Anthropology from the University of Nairobi and a Masters of Science in Archaeology from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. Pam is currently a PhD student and member of the Oldupai Gorge Stone Tools, Diet and Sociality project where she is studying faunal assemblages from Oldupai Gorge’s (Tanzania) Beds I-IV, and is is comparing faunal remains from Oldupai with studies from other sites of the same age to make inferences on environmental change, hominin behavioural patterns and site formation processes.

Dr. Makarius Itambu is a Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology and Heritage management at University in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Mak’s research the nature and type of environments that were occupied by early humans and the plant environments surrounding their habitats. He has over ten years of archaeological field experience and has worked across Tanzania in archaeological context ranging from the Early Pleistocene to the Iron Age. Since returning to Tanzania after completing his PhD, Mak began a new research initiative that aims to link the Middle Stone Age human and environmental histories of northern, central, and southern Tanzania, and is leading a field school of Tanzanian undergraduates interested in archaeology and paleoanthropology.

Dr. Itambu received his Bachelor of Arts in History and Archaeology and a Master of Arts in Archaeology and Prehistory from the University of Dar es Salaam, and a Phd in Archaeology and from the University of Calgary, Canada.

Nussaïbah Raja is a PhD candidate in the Department of Paleontology at the Friedrich-Alexander University in Germany. Her research examines the response of coral reefs to climate change and examines changes in reefs over time through the analyses of regional and global paleobiology and paleoreef databases along with new fossil trait databases. Additionally, Nussaïbah is interested in paleoscientometrics, or the knowledge imbalance in paleontology as the result of parachute science, illegal and/or unethical collections, and colonial legacies.

She received her Bachelors in Geography from King’s College London, a Masters in Physical Geography at Ankara University in Turkey another Masters in Palaeobiology from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, and is currently a PhD Candidate at Friedrich-Alexander University in Germany.

Dr. Chris Kiathipes is an environmental archaeologist and human paleoecologist who specializes in the recovery and analysis of plant microfossils. His research projects bring together archaeological and paleoecological methods to document the long-term influence of human societies on global ecosystems, and examines the combined influence of human societies and climate change on vegetation cover in Africa’s Congo Basin as well as the Great Basin region of North America. Dr. Kiahtipe’s work often includes a multi-proxy toolkit focusing on pollen analyses and past fire ecology for the reconstruction of human-environment interactions. He received his PhD from Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University in 2016, completed his first postdoc at the Institute for Prehistory and Early History Research Center Africa at the University of Cologne, Germany, and is currently a postdoc at the University of Florida.