EXPLORE WINTER 2023 | 31 Dr. Sawchuk echoes this enthusiasm. “Part of the beauty of the Museum lies in its opportunities for collaboration—all of these bright minds concentrated on so many fascinating things,” she says. “With that line of communication always open, I can walk down the hall as an anthropologist and ask about methods for studying plant DNA, for example. When scientists are able to cross-study and share data easily, that’s when new discoveries are much more likely to occur.” FUTURE-FOCUSED FIELDWORK As anthropologists, Drs. Sawchuk and Finestone seek to reframe our understanding of humanity’s past, present, and future. Their research reveals how genetics, culture, and diet bind humans to the environment, from the first hominin ancestors to communities today. As part of this work, Dr. Finestone recently traveled to southwestern Kenya with the Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropological Project (HPPP). “Millions of years ago, extinct members of the human family tree first began to make stone tools,” Dr. Finestone says. “I study how those early toolmakers navigated their environments and dealt with emerging environmental challenges.” On the shores of Lake Victoria, the HPPP team investigated fossils and some of the earliest stone tools, from the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene Epochs. Many ancient species were excavated, and the team was able to reconstruct the paleo-landscape and learn how the toolmakers interacted with the animals, plants, and stone resources in their environment. All of the team’s findings are being cleaned, prepared, and curated at the Museums of Kenya, where the specimens will permanently stay. “Whether we’re studying modern humans or extinct hominins, our lineage evolved in a balance between changing climates and the tools and behaviors that helped us to survive these changes,” Dr. Finestone says. “There are some very basic parallels between how these toolmakers adapted and evolved 2 million years ago and our lives today, where the interface of culture, technology, and environment— in particular, the challenge posed by climate change—shapes our relationship to the natural world.” Climate change is also a major theme in Dr. Sawchuk’s work. “I’m interested in understanding how ancient peoples navigated their own issues of climate change, as well as shifting economic and land-use strategies,” she says. Integrating bioarchaeology, dental anthropology, and ancient DNA to understand how people adapted biologically and socially to change, Dr. Sawchuk’s research can provide insights into the current climate crisis and its possible effects. Dr. Sawchuk also traveled to Kenya this past summer, spending time at an early Holocene Period site near Lake Turkana where she co-directed a team of archaeologists who searched for evidence of more recent human activity. “The last 10,000 years is the time period I’m most interested in— studying members of our species, Homo sapiens, who had all the same capacities that we have today,” Dr. Sawchuk says. “In the last several thousand years, herding and farming spread, people migrated and came together in new ways, and societies became more and more complex. It’s fascinating and enlightening to learn how those people dealt with similar issues to what we’re facing in 2022. “We’re a messy species, and we’re so young compared to the timeframe our hominin ancestors walked the Earth,” Dr. Sawchuk continues. “We’re facing a lot of challenges, but we have some advantages: We have big brains, we’re social creatures, and we share this collective history that, if we let it, will help inform our decisions so that we can create a better future.” The Museum's new Wade Oval Entrance
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