Zeray and Maddie were both able to attend the 27th Biennial Meeting of the Society for Africanist Archaeologists, held this year at the University of Algarve in Faro, Portugal. According to their website, this year’s theme, titled “Crossroads through Time”, was chosen as it “highlights the Algarve region of southern Portugal as a nexus of different cultures from across North Africa, Europe, and around the world, each of which have contributed to the region’s history, language, and culture over millennia. This theme underscores both the positive outcomes and challenges of living in multicultural societies—a topic of increasing importance today amid global issues that are displacing millions of people worldwide via climate change, economic hardships, and conflict.”

Maddie presented during the session titled “Identify the Bones, Identify the Past: Overcoming Identification Challenges in Paleolithic”. This session is summarized as follows: “When preserved, bones from Paleolithic sites in East Africa offer a rare opportunity to investigate human- environment dynamics. These remains, however, are often highly fragmented and of the Bovidae family, a taxonomically diversified group comprising multiple subfamilies and species. While these species exhibit varied feeding strategies, shared osteological characters combined with their fragmentary state of preservation, make species-level identification challenging. This hampers paleoenvironmental analysis and limits our reconstruction of human-animal interactions. The goal of this session is to review the current state of research on human- environment dynamics including behavioral interpretations during the Paleolithic showcasing both classical and innovative studies including, but not limited to morphometrics, stable isotope analyses and ZooMS. This session aims to establish a solid foundation for studying African fauna and in particular Bovidae. It will foster reflection on the challenges of faunal identification and interpretation, encourage discussions on shared methodologies and innovative approaches and expand the conversation to include researchers dealing with similar issues related to different Paleolithic faunas. It will address challenges related to faunal identification and paleoenvironmental reconstruction, with the goal of deepening our understanding of human behavior and human-environment relationships during the Paleolithic.”

Maddie’s talk, coauthored with Zeray and titled “Bovid astragalus ecomorphology using 3D GM and phylogenetic flexible discriminant analysis”, has the following abstract: “Bovids commonly serve as a proxy for contextualizing hominin paleoecology. Astragalus ecomorphology is often used in this context due to the bone’s great preservation and abundance. Existing methods using linear measurements can distinguish well between astragali of species from open and closed habitats but are limited in their ability to discern among intermediate habitats. This study applies new approaches to generate a more comprehensive characterization of astragalus ecomorphology in extant bovids (n = 137). We use 3D geometric morphometrics and canonical variates analysis (CVA) to investigate how 3D shape can distinguish among four habitat categories with varying vegetation cover: forest, heavy cover, light cover, and open. We then apply a phylogenetic flexible discriminant analysis (pFDA) to investigate the influence of phylogeny on discrimination among habitats. CVA results indicate that the 3D shape of the astragalus reliably separates among habitat categories, with a cross-validated classification rate of 76%. The pFDA additionally indicates that it is still possible to discriminate among the same habitat categories while accounting for phylogeny. Our results provide a clearer understanding of how astragalus morphology varies with habitat and phylogeny, which can ultimately be leveraged to improve our understanding of the variability of habitats that hominins evolved in.”

Zeray was invited as part of the Plenary Event and spoke alongside Sada Mire, Shadreck Chirikure, Alma Nankela, Krish Seetah, and Intisar Soghayroun. The panel was asked to provide thoughts on two complex questions, in additions to others. The first of these asked about indigenous communites: How can local and indigenous communities effectively protect and manage their cultural heritage when they often face systemic barriers to participation in decision-making processes? These gaps between communities and the government institutions or international organizations that set heritage policies can lead to exclusion, misrepresentation, or loss of control over their own histories and traditions. In this context, what responsibilities do archaeologists and paleoanthropologists have as professionals who frequently advise on heritage laws and policies, while also building close relationships with local and indigenous groups? How can archaeologists support more inclusive, equitable, and community-centered approaches to heritage protection? The second question asked about human migration: The movements of people, whether forced or voluntary, has become an increasingly common phenomenon in the modern world. This movement is driven by a complex interplay of factors including economic instability, armed conflict, environmental degradation, and the growing impact of climate change. Archaeologists often emphasize that a primary goal of their work is to understand the past in order to shed light on the present and to offer insights into our collective future. However, beyond academic insight, what are the real actionable ways that members of the archaeologist community can address the issues of displacement that dominate do much public discourse today? In other words, how can the knowledge gained from archaeology and from the broader humanities and social sciences be translated to meaningful strategies that engage contemporary crises of mobility and uprootedness? Their discussions can be viewed here.