IN CONVERSATION WITH PROFESSOR DOMINIC STRATFORD ON SCIENCE WISE

Professor Dominic Stratford is a geoarchaeologist whose research focuses on stratigraphy and site formation processes at archaeological and palaeoanthropological sites in southern Africa. He specialises in cave and rock shelter sediments but has worked across a wide range of fossil- and artefact-bearing landscapes, from arid open environments to buried river gravels. His work is deeply interdisciplinary, drawing together archaeology and the earth sciences to understand how sites formed over time and to separate human behavioural signals from the many natural processes that shape them. He has applied this work across southern Africa, from the Namib Desert to caves and rock shelters preserving deposits spanning the last 3.5 million years. He is also the Director of Research at Sterkfontein Caves, where he supports innovative research ranging from multi-scale analysis of StW 573, or “Little Foot,” to three-dimensional spatial analysis of fossils and stone tools, as well as augmented reality applications in science education.