̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Kenya

Sharpening our knowledge of prehistory on East Africa’s bone harpoons

tdk25 — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 09:00:20 +0000

East Africa is the epicentre of human evolution and its archaeological remains offer the potential to fill gaps in our understanding of early modern humans from their earliest origins, around 200,000 years ago, through to the most ‘recent’ prehistory of the last 10,000 years.

̽��ֱ��In Africa project, directed by Dr Marta Mirazón Lahr, co-founder of the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, is seeking to do exactly that. ̽��ֱ��group believes that, in East Africa, key ecological and cultural conditions converged, which allowed modern humans to evolve new behaviours and technologies to better exploit the natural resources that they found around them.

For the past five years, they has been working on the palaeoshores of Lake Turkana in Kenya, which has offered significant insights into how people there made use of aquatic resources such as fish or shellfish, something which is seen as a marker of human modernity.

Dr Alex Wilshaw, in Cambridge's Department of Biological Anthropology and a fellow of St John’s College, is a Research Associate on the project. “Looking at prehistoric tools and technology is a key way of exploring when and how the cultural and behavioural traits associated with modern humans were developed,” he explains.

“ ̽��ֱ��area around Lake Turkana is extraordinarily rich not just in fossils, but also in artefacts used to exploit the ecology of the area. In the case of aquatic resources from the lake, these artefacts are often harpoons or points made from bone. While previous archaeological projects have led to pockets of harpoon discovery, the extent of this project has afforded us the opportunity to collect unprecedented numbers of bone harpoons – to date, we have over 500 from 20 different sites.”

Mirazón Lahr and Wilshaw are now preparing a monograph cataloguing and describing the harpoons to give a clearer picture of the diversity that exists within the collection.

“Together, the harpoons have the potential to offer a spatial and temporal cross-section of the activities of early modern humans in the area and tell us something about functional and stylistic changes in technology,” Wilshaw says. “ ̽��ֱ��sites contain artefacts from groups who lived at different times and if we look at the harpoons in detail, their distinct styles show signs of variation among different populations and could offer clues about the appearance and disappearance of diverse groups as the lake levels rose and fell over time.”

̽��ֱ��harpoons range in date from around 13,000 years ago – late in the geological epoch known as the Pleistocene – to around 6,000 years ago, the middle of the current geological epoch known as the Holocene. ̽��ֱ��researchers used radiocarbon and other dating techniques on samples of shell and sediment surrounding the harpoons to place them in time.

While some of the harpoons were sharpened into elongated spears or barbed points, others look more like hooks. Some have been decorated and polished. “There is some discussion over what the harpoons were used for, but we think it is likely to have been fishing, rather than hunting of land animals, as they were all discovered on the lake edge,” Wilshaw explains. “ ̽��ֱ��harpoons would have been attached to a pole or haft and connected using twine or string which then enabled the hunter-fishers to spear their prey and then pull in their catch. There are some huge species of fish native to this area and some of the bigger and thicker harpoons may have been used to catch species like Nile Perch, which can grow up to two metres long. It is possible that the groups were using them to hunt hippo, which were also common in the area.”

̽��ֱ��research team focused their efforts on recovering remains from across an extensive landscape exhibiting the remnants of the lake edge and its surrounding flood plain. Many animal and human remains were fossilised and preserved in mud and sediment on the shores of the lake, but as the lake shrank and the environment became increasingly dry, the wind and rain eroded the surface and exposed the fossils.

This phenomenon led the group to the discovery not just of the bone harpoons, but also of many other prehistoric human remains and artefacts. Published last year in Nature, such fossilised bones protruding from the earth led to the remarkable discovery of the remains of a group of hunter gatherers who were brutally massacred around 10,000 years ago at the site of Nataruk – the earliest record of inter-group violence among prehistoric nomadic people.

̽��ֱ��researchers are hoping to win further funding to unlock more of the secrets of East Africa’s prehistoric harpoons.

“Some appear to have been carved from bone, some from ivory and others from horn, but we would like to do a more detailed analysis of what they were made out of and whether there was a preference for material,” adds Wilshaw. “Searching for patterns in functionality could reveal whether design and material varied for different prey and how creative the people were being with technology. Interestingly, some of the harpoons also look as if they have been polished and residue analysis could tell us what people were using to care for their tools”

̽��ֱ��In Africa project, which was funded by the European Research Council, aims to use its fossils and archaeological discoveries to enhance international awareness of the role of Africa in the evolution of human diversity.

“ ̽��ֱ��harpoons are the iconic remains of a people who have disappeared,” says Mirazón Lahr, “when they lived, Lake Turkana was much larger and the environment much richer. These discoveries allow us to track their lives, from when the lake rose as the ice age ended to the point where the lake shrank and desert conditions set in – bringing an end to the tradition that had lasted thousands of years and about which very little was previously known.”

Inset images from the In Africa project.

To keep up to date with the latest stories about Cambridge’s engagement with Africa, follow #CamAfrica on Twitter.

A project exploring the role of East Africa in the evolution of modern humans has amassed the largest and most diverse collection of prehistoric bone harpoons ever assembled from the area. ̽��ֱ��collection offers clues about the behaviour and technology of prehistoric hunter-gatherers.

"There are some huge species of fish native to this area and some of the bigger and thicker harpoons may have been used to catch species like Nile Perch, which can grow up to two metres long."

Alex Wilshaw

Harpoons discovered by the In Africa project

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Building from the ground up: participatory design in Kenya’s oldest slum

jeh98 — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 07:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��community of Mathare 3A, built along a small river valley in Nairobi, is located in one of Kenya’s oldest and largest slums. It is lacking in most basic services such as sanitation and electricity. There are few permanent structures, with most people living in temporary shacks made of wood and corrugated iron.

Now a team of Cambridge researchers and students has been working on a project under the UN-Habitat-coordinated Global Network for Sustainable Housing (GNSH) to build a community centre in the heart of this impoverished area, and they are doing so using a model that makes the community’s involvement central to the process – participatory design.

This is the first time that UN-Habitat has worked with a university on a project like this, and it is hoped that it will provide a scalable model for future projects with other communities and institutions.

Project Manager Dr Maximilian Bock, from the Department of Architecture, explains: “the aim of participatory design is not to change the rich culture that already exists in Mathare, but rather to understand it deeply enough to design a space that is useful to and reflective of the community.”

̽��ֱ��first residents started arriving in the Mathare Valley in the 1920s, and by 2012 the population was estimated at 188,000 – with around 1,500 living in the informal settlement of Mathare 3A. ̽��ֱ��Kintaco community hall currently consists of a temporary structure with a capacity for less than 100 people. At present, it is mainly used by the men.

Ana Gatóo and Elizabeth Wagemann, also from the Department of Architecture, have now produced construction drawings that will enable the residents of Mathare 3A to build a new, more useful community centre for themselves. ̽��ֱ��structure consists of replicable units so that, with some training, the residents will be able to learn quickly how to build the hall under the guidance of an onsite engineer.

One of the crucial steps in the redesign of the hall saw Gatóo travel to Mathare in January 2015. As Gatóo explains, “engaging with each sector of the community was essential to ensuring that the preliminary designs reflected the input of all those who would use the hall in different capacities and at different times of day.

“ ̽��ֱ��women who participated in the focus group commented that this was the first time they had been specifically asked for their input in the design process of a community construction project.”

With only a limited period in Mathare to find out what the community members wanted from their new facility, the team adapted the often time-consuming participatory design model into a very visual process. “Using wall charts, pictures, models and coloured stickers,” lead designer Elizabeth Wagemann explains, “we were able to find out what residents thought of other community centres, the potential risks to the hall, how they hoped to use the facility, and what skills they could contribute to constructing and managing it.”

“There are instances, for example in the neighbouring settlement of Kibera, where community construction projects aren’t used by the residents. ̽��ֱ��participatory design process is essential for fusing the community’s ambitions for the space with the material and organisational resources necessary to realise the project. Involving the community from the beginning is important in ensuring that, once it is built, they will manage, maintain, and above all make use of it,” says Bock.

Supported by the UN-Habitat programme, the project draws on the expertise of the Department of Architecture’s Natural Materials and Structures group where the Cambridge team is based. Led by Michael Ramage, the group focuses on adapting natural materials and traditional methods to contemporary architecture. ̽��ֱ��design team formed by Maximilian Bock, Ana Gatóo and Elizabeth Wagemann was also supported by Research Associate Thomas Reynolds, Masters students Bob Muhia, Katherine Prater, Anna Rowell and Thomas Aquilina, and undergraduate Chloe Tayali, who have each been volunteering around six hours a week on the project.

Bock explains how they have learned that local acceptance of the building materials is of great importance. “From an environmental perspective, wood is a good sustainable material, but among the local community in Mathare, wooden structures are seen as a fire hazard. In contrast, concrete buildings with multiple floors are seen as aspirational,” he says. “One of the challenges for us was to balance the need for environmental sustainability with the need for local acceptance.”

In their completed design for a 15x30m building, made out of gabions filled with local or recycled stone and a floor and roof structure made from bamboo, they have managed to match what the community had imagined as well as what the complex network of other stakeholders want.

One female resident of Mathare 3A commented: “I really like the design as it includes everything our community needs under one roof.”

̽��ֱ��team has also struck up a unique partnership with the Kenyan Forestry Services to provide the sustainable materials for around $20,000 instead of the team’s original estimates of $100,000. “ ̽��ֱ��design could serve as a model for other community centres using locally sourced sustainable building materials,” says Samson Mogire from the Kenya Forestry Research Institute.

As an experimental project, the team feel it has so far been a great success. ̽��ֱ��residents of Mathare are already very engaged and their feedback sessions have been lively with questions about the hall and the construction process. And now as the project moves from phase to phase, it also moves further into the ownership of the community.

Despite its size, Bock states, Mathare 3A has been identified as an area that has previously been overlooked when it comes to development initiatives. It is hoped that projects such as this one will draw attention and further successful development projects to the settlement.

Back in Cambridge, the team has learnt a lot to apply to participatory design projects in the future, and acquired experience designing with materials that will be important for future research. In two years’ time they will carry out an analysis of how the materials are performing and how the hall is being used to see what else can be learned from this process of building from the ground up.

̽��ֱ��project is also part of the EcoHouse Initiative, which drives sustainable urban development in the developing world. EcoHouse was funded by the AngloAmerican Group Foundation. ̽��ֱ��research has been enabled by the Higher Education Innovation Fund.

Inset images: video courtesy of Roadmap to Mathare; a participatory design session in Mathare 3A (Ana Gatóo); the design for the new community centre (Maximilian Bock, Ana Gatóo, Elizabeth Wagemann, Department of Architecture); Mathare 3A (Ana Gatóo).

In a landmark project with UN-Habitat, a team of Cambridge researchers has designed a community centre in one of Kenya’s biggest and oldest slums, and its future users are now raising funds to build it.

̽��ֱ��women commented that this was the first time they had been specifically asked for their input in the design process of a community construction project

Ana Gatóo

Mathare, Nairobi

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

How the British treated 'hardcore' Mau Mau women

mjg209 — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 09:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��research, published in the Journal of Eastern African Studies, was conducted by Gates Cambridge Scholar Katherine Bruce-Lockhart and is the first study to make use of new material on a camp in Gitamayu used to hold "hardcore" female detainees.

̽��ֱ��treatment of the Mau Mau by the British has led to compensation claims in the courts. Last year the British government agreed to pay out £19.9m in costs and compensation to more than 5,000 elderly Kenyans who suffered torture and abuse during the Mau Mau uprising in the 50s. Two of those involved in the recent case were women and further female compensation cases are pending.

Bruce-Lockhart is interested in the treatment of "hardcore" Mau Mau women in the final years of the Emergency Period, one that was marked by uncertainty, violence and an increasing reliance on ethno-psychiatry.

From 1954 to 1960, the British detained approximately 8,000 women under the Emergency Powers imposed to combat the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya. ̽��ֱ��majority of female detainees were held in Kamiti Detention Camp and its importance has been widely acknowledged by historians. However, new documentary evidence released from the Hanslope Park Archive since 2011 has revealed the existence of a second camp established for women at Gitamayu, created in 1958 in order to deal with the remaining “hardcore” female detainees.

̽��ֱ��Archive contains over 1,500 files and was uncovered in 2011 by historians working on the London High Court case between the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Kenyan plaintiffs who were held in detention camps during the Emergency Period. ̽��ֱ��files were considered too sensitive to fall into the hands of the Kenyan government, and were taken out of Kenya by the British prior to independence. ̽��ֱ��files have been pivotal in the London High Court Case, as their contents show how senior British officials sanctioned the use of systematic force against Mau Mau detainees in the camps, stretching the legal limits of legitimate violence. ̽��ֱ��documents relating to Kamiti and Gitamayu reveal how this systematic use of violence was extended to hardcore women and the multiple ways colonial officials tried to hide it.

̽��ֱ��intensity of this struggle with hardcore detainees, and the trajectory it took, has been overlooked by previous scholarly works on Mau Mau women, which have provided a general overview of female involvement in the movement, as well as their detention at Kamiti. Much more is known about hardcore men, who have authored over a dozen Mau Mau memoirs and are the subject of extensive scholarly analysis. ̽��ֱ��stories and identities of these men, from Jomo Kenyatta to J.M. Kariuki, are well known. ̽��ֱ��hardcore male camps, such as Manyani, Athi River, and Hola, are remembered as the sites of intense struggles between detainees and warders. Recent work from historian David Anderson has detailed the British policy toward hardcore males, which became more brutal and systematic from 1957 onwards.

Bruce-Lockhart says: "In contrast, the history of women's detention has not been investigated in detail, especially in the latter years of the Emergency Period. Women's punishment broadly followed a pattern similar to that of their male counterparts, with increasing severity of treatment characterising the final phase of incarceration as the British endeavored to compel inmates to confess their crimes. But the story of the female detainees at Gitamayu and Kamiti also reveals unique elements that were determined by colonial ideas about female deviancy, these ultimately becoming the defining feature of incarceration for Mau Mau's hardcore women.

" ̽��ֱ��Hanslope archives reveal the strategies that the colonial administration employed to deal with hardcore women in the late 1950s. Whereas previously there was an assumption that women were malleable and could be easily persuaded away from the Mau Mau cause this expectation greatly diminished during this time, and was replaced with a discourse of madness, as certain elements of the colonial administration pressed for hardcore women to be classified as insane. This move was instrumental rather than genuine, meant to explain away women's physical ailments in order to cover up mistreatment in the camp."

She adds: "Debates about how to deal with this group of women engaged and perplexed the highest levels of the colonial administration, generating tensions between legal, political, and medical officials. At the centre of these debates was the question of the female detainees' sanity, with some officials pressing for these women to be classified as insane. Examining the British approach to these detainees illuminates how ideas about gender, deviancy, and mental health shaped colonial practices of punishment."

For more information, click here.

New research on the treatment of 'hardcore' female Mau Mau prisoners by the British in the late 1950s sheds new light on how ideas about gender, deviancy and mental health shaped colonial practices of punishment.

̽��ֱ��story of the female detainees at Gitamayu and Kamiti also reveals unique elements that were determined by colonial ideas about female deviancy, these ultimately becoming the defining feature of incarceration for Mau Mau's hardcore women.

Katherine Bruce-Lockhart

AJ Tattersall

Mau Mau gang

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

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Attribution

Farming the 'long-necked thing’: moving from cows to camels

lw355 — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 10:12:38 +0000

It’s a long and bone-shaking drive from Nairobi to the Marsabit County of northern Kenya.

Marsabit has an arid landscape, prone to drought, with dusty lowlands leading up to forested volcanic highlands. ̽��ֱ��thousands of people who make a living from the land here – among them the Boran and Gabra – are pastoralists. For as long as anyone can remember, they have moved with their livestock, following the rain to find grazing.

In 2012 Dr Elizabeth Watson, a human geographer who specialises in eastern Africa, spent a month carrying out fieldwork in Marsabit. It wasn’t her first trip to the region: she trained as an anthropologist and an earlier study of the relationship between landscape and ritual had brought her into contact with the Boran and neighbouring groups. She returned last year with a more specific set of objectives: to understand why the Boran people, whose culture has been traditionally tied to cattle herding, are now turning to camel keeping.

She said: “Camels were by no means unknown to the Boran but they were always considered inferior by people whose daily lives are linked to the cattle which provide them with milk, meat, ritual goods and trading opportunities. Boran identity is so strongly connected to cattle that it is often said that ‘to be Boran is to have cattle’, and some observe a taboo that forbids them from saying the word camel, which they describe as ‘the long-necked thing’.”

Yet, whereas cattle are demanding in terms of their needs for water and fodder, camels have an extraordinary ability to survive for a long time without water and to live on harsh scrub vegetation, and they produce rich, nutritious milk over long periods.

“Faced with increased aridity and pressures of food security, the Boran people began investing in camels as an alternative or addition to cattle around 16 years ago,” said Watson, whose research was funded by a Thesiger Oman International Fellowship and the Royal Geographical Society with IBG.

“An investigation into how people negotiate such a profound change of lifestyle forms one of the chief strands of my fieldwork. There’s an assumption that pastoralists, who are seen as being highly traditional, will be resistant to change. In fact they are highly flexible and pragmatic. People spoke to me warmly about the advantages of camels over cattle. And when I asked them how they would pay for brides, they said they would sell a camel to buy cattle so that the ritual would be upheld. It’s an interesting example of people’s ability to adapt to changes and embrace opportunities.”

While cattle herding took the Boran on long treks to distant water points in times of drought, camels are happy to live near or in town where they feed on the liquid-rich euphorbia hedges that surround many compounds. “One man said he hadn’t taken his camel to water for three years. Proximity to town gives herders access to a ready market for milk and they are able to sign contracts with shopkeepers and café owners,” said Watson. “We also found that while the milking of cattle was one of the duties carried out by women, both men and women were involved in milking camels.”

Camels bring new challenges as well as advantages. There are few vets in rural Kenya and camels suffer from a range of diseases, some of which can affect humans. Watson said: “While some people said that their camels were flourishing, others said that their animals had become sick and had died. There was a lack of knowledge and medicines to treat them. Certain breeds of camel are more suited to harsh, rocky areas than others, something not always understood by the development organisations who, seeing the new preference for camels, have started to give them out as a form of restocking.

Watson’s work will not only inform NGOs but also provide much-needed information about the challenges faced when a society adapts to pressures such as the need for food security.

A move from cattle herding to camel keeping among Kenyan farmers is more than an economic transition, it represents a fundamental shift in age-old customs.

Some observe a taboo that forbids them from saying the word camel, which they describe as ‘the long-necked thing’

Elizabeth Watson

Camel farming

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Yes

Beachcombing for early humans in Africa

amb94 — Fri, 31 May 2013 14:49:20 +0000

In the middle of an African desert, with no water to be found for miles, scattered shells, fishing harpoons, fossilised plants and stone tools reveal signs of life from the water’s edge of another era. In 40°C heat, anthropologists Dr Marta Mirazón Lahr and Professor Robert Foley from Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies (LCHES) are painstakingly searching for clues to the origin and diversification of modern humans, from the artefacts they left behind to the remains of the people themselves.

Kenya, East Africa, has long been known as the ‘cradle of mankind’ following the discovery of fossils thought to be of the first members of the human family, which arose in Africa around 6–7 million years ago. Various distinct species evolved from these ancestors over millions of years, including our own – Homo sapiens – around 250,000 years ago.

“A lot of the research on the origins of modern humans has focused on defining their point of origin, then understanding why humans left Africa about 60,000 years ago to colonise the rest of the world – known as the Out of Africa model,” said Mirazón Lahr. “But we have no idea what happened between 200,000 years and 60,000 years ago. We also have very little information on what occurred inside Africa after 60,000 years, when the different population groups and languages we see today evolved. ̽��ֱ��genetics suggest that the expansion out of Africa is just the tip of a massive population expansion inside the continent.”

Mirazón Lahr’s In Africa project, recently awarded five-year funding from the European Research Council, is investigating the evolutionary history of modern human populations. “ ̽��ֱ��challenge is to find the sites where evidence of these early people can be recovered – their stone tools, the animals they hunted, their ornaments and, ultimately, the fossils of the people themselves,” she said.

East Africa has played a central role in all earlier phases of human evolution. She has chosen to focus on this region based on the theory that its past environment was suitable for sustained occupation over time. But East Africa is huge, and finding the right place to look is absolutely crucial. Mirazón Lahr used satellite technology to find the first clues.

“In the past there were periods of enormous rainfall in the tropics. When glaciers melted in the northern hemisphere, due to climate change, the water evaporated and then fell in the tropics as monsoon rains,” she said. “ ̽��ֱ��lakes were much higher and their margins were wider. We are using satellite images of the region to reconstruct where the ancient lake margins would have been when the lakes were last high, and that’s where we look.”

Mirazón Lahr and Foley have already carried out three field expeditions, in 2009, 2010 and 2011, to investigate their two chosen sites: the Turkana and the Nakuru-Naivasha basins of the Rift Valley in Kenya, and have made some spectacular finds on the ancient Turkana beaches.

“Ten thousand years ago, this area was wetter, with gazelles, hippos and lions, and the beaches are still there even though the water is long gone. We’ve found shells on the surface, and harpoons the people used to fish with. We go there and we just walk,” said Mirazón Lahr. “A lot has already been exposed by the wind, and occasionally we find sites where things are buried, and then we dig.”

“We’re looking at the lithics – stone tools – and how these relate to times of particularly high lake levels,” said Mirazón Lahr. “Then we’re looking at the fauna and, if we’re lucky, we find actual human fossils. ̽��ֱ��oldest fossil ever found that looks like a modern human is 200,000 years old, and comes from the basin of Lake Turkana. We’re trying to find the fossils that mark the origin of Homo sapiens. ̽��ֱ��ancient Turkana beach is an incredibly fossil-rich site, and we’ve already found such exciting things!

“We have many human remains – about 700 fragments – mostly dating from between 12,000 and 7,000 years ago, which match the age of this beach. To do the population biology and answer the questions about diversity we need these large numbers. This is already the biggest collection of this age in Africa.”

̽��ֱ��primitive technologies that our early ancestors left behind change over time, and comparing finds dated to different times can advance understanding of our evolutionary trajectory. “We think the evolution to modern humans is associated with changes in behaviour and in technology, for example in their tool use,” said Mirazón Lahr. “We’ve already found evidence that they started using animal bones to make tools, which was rare in earlier populations.”

“ ̽��ֱ��people who lived around this lake 10,000 years ago used microliths – a form of miniaturised stone tool technology,” said Foley. “Instead of producing one or two big flakes like the earliest modern humans, they produced lots of very small flakes to make composite tools. This is a sign of the flexibility of the way modern humans adapted to different conditions. We’ve also found a beach in the Turkana Basin from about 200,000 years ago and that has its own very different fossilised fauna, and very different stone tools. ̽��ֱ��technology and the people changed a lot over the past 200,000 years.”

Mirazón Lahr emphasises that geography and climate played a critical role in the origins and diversification of modern humans. “ ̽��ֱ��times when the lakes were high were periods of plenty in East Africa,” she said. “When it was very wet there were lots of animals, the vegetation could grow, and you can imagine that the people would have thrived.” East Africa had a unique mosaic environment with lake basins, highlands and plains that provided alternative niches for foraging populations over this period. Mirazón Lahr believes that these complex conditions were shaped by varying local responses to global climate change.

“We think that early modern humans could live in the region throughout these long periods, even if they had to move between basins.” With a network of habitable zones, human populations survived by expanding, contracting and shifting ranges according to the changing conditions. By comparing the fossil records from different basins over time, Mirazón Lahr hopes to establish a spatial and temporal pattern of human occupation over the past 200,000 years.

Her approach is a multidisciplinary one, combining genetic, fossil, archaeological and palaeoclimatic information to form an accurate picture of events. Drawing on her wide-ranging interests from molecular genetics to lithics and prehistory, she believes that the way to find novel insights is to consider each problem from various angles.

This approach is intrinsic to the In Africa project, in which she and Foley are not just searching for new fossils, but also trying to build a complete picture of our early ancestors’ lives and the external forces that shaped their evolution, both biological and behavioural. “ ̽��ֱ��project will be one of the first investigations into humans of this date in East Africa,” said Foley. “Given Africa is where we all come from, that’s critical.”

From the earliest modern humans to the present day, our species has evolved dramatically in both biological and behavioural terms. What forces prompted these momentous changes?

We have many human remains – about 700 fragments – mostly dating from between 12,000 and 7,000 years ago, which match the age of this beach. This is already the biggest collection of this age in Africa

Marta Mirazón Lahr

Alex Wilshaw

Stone tools used by Homo sapiens

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Yes

A conservation leader in the making

lw355 — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:00:09 +0000

Cycling to lectures through Cambridge’s medieval streets, learning leadership skills from pioneers in conservation of the environment, splashing into the turquoise waters of the Caribbean to observe marine life. These are among the many memories that Joy Juma will take home to Kenya after a year at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge as one of the first cohort of graduate students on the MPhil in Conservation Leadership programme.

̽��ֱ��past year has been one of the most varied and demanding in Joy’s life. Not only has she experienced one of the coldest British winters on record but she also spent seven weeks on a placement with the Cambridge-based conservation organisation Fauna & Flora International (FFI) on the islands of Antigua and Barbuda, extending her practical and grass-roots knowledge of marine conservation.

Her visit to the Caribbean entailed gathering data on the marine environment and the ways in which it intersects with two of the area’s most important sources of revenue – fishing and tourism – which are vital to the livelihoods of thousands of people on modest or low incomes. ̽��ֱ��emphasis of her research was on marine governance. “On Antigua, I was based at the Fisheries Division of the Ministry of Agriculture, Lands, Housing and the Environment, and also spent some time talking to individual fishermen about their working lives. It was so encouraging that the fishermen are really keen to conserve their environment and they showed a deep understanding of ecosystem dynamics,” she said.

“On Barbuda, I found that people felt an even stronger sense of ownership of the marine environment, perhaps because land there is communally owned. This revealed itself in their interest in marine conservation. On both islands, there is a profound commitment to sustainable management and a willingness to work towards this that was really exciting. It shows how conservationists and communities can work together to protect threatened species and the habitats they live in. What emerged most forcefully from my placement was the similarity of conservation problems globally and the opportunities for learning from each other.”

Once back in Kenya, where she works for the East African arm of FFI, Joy will apply her experiences in the Caribbean and what she has learnt on the MPhil programme in Cambridge. In 2009, together with colleagues at FFI, she was instrumental in setting up marine conservation projects with fishing communities at six different landing places on the south coast of Kenya. ̽��ֱ��objective is to manage marine resources in a way that is sustainable and participatory. “It’s a scheme that brings diverse stakeholders together for a common purpose – and the early indications are that it is very effective,” she explained.

Joy has been passionate about conservation ever since she was a teenager. On leaving school, she took a degree in environmental studies at Nairobi’s Kenyatta ̽��ֱ��, concentrating on community development. After graduating, she spent a year working as a volunteer for the East African Wildlife Society, a Kenyan-based NGO. “I worked on the restoration of a lake that straddles the boundary between Kenya and Tanzania, and during this time I gained essential skills and experience,” she said. Having excelled as a volunteer, and shown her ability to co-ordinate and manage projects, Joy was offered a post with FFI as a programme assistant. After four years she was promoted to a programme co-ordinator.

In East Africa, FFI works across four countries – Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Sudan. In her five years with the organisation, Joy has been involved in various projects, including participatory forest management and species recovery. During this time she twice visited the headquarters of FFI, which has strong links with Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� as a founding partner of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI). “I liked what I saw of Cambridge, which is a real hub for conservation and has a strong international ethos. So when I heard about the new Masters in Conservation Leadership, I was really keen to apply for a place,” she said.

“What appealed to me about the course was the chance to develop skills that are crucial in project management. I liked the way in which the course is structured to give participants a solid grounding in leadership – such as communication and financial planning – as well as incorporating a placement with a partner organisation that would offer a chance to see another environment and another set of challenges.”

When FFI and the MAVA programme in Conservation Leadership agreed to sponsor Joy’s place on the programme, she was thrilled but also nervous. “I knew it was a huge opportunity to develop myself professionally. I was also aware that I’d be thrown back on my own resources far from my usual support network in East Africa,” she admitted. She need not have worried. ̽��ֱ��12 students from nine different countries on the programme quickly formed a strong bond. “We have a huge diversity of backgrounds and interests, so we have been able to learn a vast amount from each other,” she said.

̽��ֱ��Masters comprises two parts: the first of which is largely taught by lecturers from every organisation in CCI, talking about their specialist fields, and the second of which is the placement. “In the first two terms we had lectures from many of the pioneering groups and centres based in and around Cambridge – it was an amazing chance to hear from them and to be able to ask questions. What I found especially useful were the leadership lectures from people at the helm of established institutions,” added Joy.

Life as a Cambridge student has been rewarding and challenging. “Spending a year living and working in Cambridge has been a stimulating experience. I will be returning to Kenya ready to be an innovative and effective conservation leader.”

Joy Juma, from Kenya, is among the first early-career conservation practitioners to take an innovative Masters programme at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

What emerged most forcefully from my placement was the similarity of conservation problems globally and the opportunities for learning from each other.

Joy Juma

Working in the Caribbean with Fauna & Flora International

Joy Juma

MPhil in Conservation Leadership

Launched in 2010 by the Department of Geography, the MPhil in Conservation Leadership focuses on equipping its students with the tools to become professional managers in the world of conservation. Key to its success is the collective expertise of partners in the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI): eight leading conservation organisations and one conservation network clustered in the Cambridge area and six departments across the ̽��ֱ��, including the Cambridge Judge Business School and the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership.

Students go beyond developing a deeper awareness of the complex drivers of biodiversity loss to learn skills that will prepare them for the challenges of leadership: strategic planning, finance, innovation, entrepreneurship, advocacy and communication.

̽��ֱ��Director of Conservation Leadership, and Fellow of Churchill College, Dr Nigel Leader-Williams, explained: “ ̽��ֱ��programme is built along similar lines to the business school model, with a professional placement spent with one of CCI organisations providing the students with hands-on experience of management tasks.”

Many of the students are from less-developed countries, where the most biodiversity remains but also where the losses are probably the greatest. “We need to grow the number of dedicated scholarships that are available for the course because most of the students we aim to attract don’t have the funds necessary to cover the costs of the course,” added Dr Leader-Williams. ̽��ֱ��programme is supported for a period of 10 years by a generous gift from the MAVA Fondation pour la Protection de la Nature, while Arcadia has agreed to establish a Miriam Rothschild Scholarship Programme in Conservation Leadership for the next five years.

As the first cohort of students complete their studies and resume their careers in conservation around the globe, the contacts they have made will be invaluable. This, explained Dr Mike Rands, Executive Director of CCI, is a strategic aim of the programme: “With successive years, this innovative course will create a growing international leadership network, build conservation capacity and become a major force for better environmental stewardship.”

For more information, please contact Dr Nigel Leader-Williams (nigel.leader-williams@geog.cam.ac.uk) or visit www.geog.cam.ac.uk/graduate/mphil/conservation/

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