News archive

Inèz Faul is the first PhD student of the KHO project to accomplish her degree with her thesis titled “Geoarchaeology in semi-arid landscapes: a case study from the Kgalagadi”. The defense was held on January 19th 2026 at Kiel University. Main supervisor was KHO Project Leader Dr Michaela Ecker.

You can find the abstract of her thesis here.

View our new blogpost about the KHO Workshop in July 2025 here.

From October 1 to 3, Michaela Ecker was part of the Schleswig-Holstein state delegation attending the German Unity Day celebrations in Saarbrücken. You can find more informations in an article by Kiel University here.

View the post of the German Embassy in Botswana about our visit in September 2025 on Instagram or Facebook.

We welcome Dr Elena Amelie Hensel-Karamalakidou and student assistant Alicia Thomsen to our team!

From July 1-4, the members of the Kagalagadi Human Origin Project will meet in Kiel for an international workshop and transfer of knowledge. The event begins on July 1with a talk by Dr. Michaela Ecker on the topic of perspectives on human evolution in the southern Kalahari Desert. The talk will take place at 5.00 pm at the University of Kiel, but those interested can also participate digitally. Please register by June 29.

Find us at the Kiel Conference from 24-29. March 2025 with a poster presentation and a talk. Rowena Winterhalder, Inèz Faul and colleagues present their poster: “Lithics and landscapes: Archaeological material and geomorphological forms at Maralaleng Pan, southern Kalahari basin”. This contribution aims to identify where artefacts are located in relation to different geomorphological features inside the pans and whether this can provide insight into hominin landscape use during the Pleistocene. Dr. Michaela Ecker and colleagues will give an in-person talk on Thursday, March 27th titled: “Exploring landscape connectiveness through past vegetation modelling”. The object of the talk is the potential of collaborations between archaeologists, palaeodata specialists and climate modellers based on the results of a pioneer project about ancient climates in Africa.

All are welcome to a public talk hosted jointly by the Archaeological Society Trans-!Garib Branch and the McGregor Museum. Dr. Michaela Ecker will give a talk about new insight into past environmental change from archaeological sites in the Northern Cape. The talk will take place on March 4, at 18:00 o’clock at the Duggan-Cronin-Gallery in Kimberley, South Africa.

We invite submissions of abstracts to our SAfA conference session 2025 Challenges and opportunities of surface sites: The Kalahari basin and adjoining arid regions. Deadline 31/01/2025 All information here.

Congratulations to our Bachelor student Esther Renken from CAU Kiel for submitting her thesis titled “Research History of Pniel, South Africa”.

Congratulations to our Master student Helena Pribliczki from CAU Kiel for submitting her thesis titled “Analysis of Faunal Remains from the Middle Stone Age Open-Air Site Pniel 6, South Africa”.

We are very happy to announce that we passed the mid-term evaluation of our KHO project by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG)!

Call for papers for the session “Out in the open: Ongoing research at Pleistocene open-air sites in southern Africa” organised by Inèz Faul, Maryke Horn & Rene Sielemann for the 2024 ASAPA Conference. Deadline: 30/01/2024 Link: https://www.asapa.co.za/2024-lesotho-conference.

Our PhD candidate Inèz Faul will hold a talk on the 12th December titled “Modern human origins in the Kalahari Desert: A case study from the Kgalagadi District, Botswana” at 5 pm in the Welcome Center for the Guesthouse Talks.
Please register that you will join a week before the event with this email: nsmith@uv.uni-kiel.de

The talk is aimed towards people without archaeological background, so feel free to come!

Michaela Ecker will hold a talk about our research with the title: “Tracing Human Origins: Archaeological Fieldwork in the Kalahari” at CAU Kiel for the Late Night Science-Series on the 28th November, 6:15 pm!

We welcome Bacara Spruit from the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) for a visit to CAU Kiel. She will give a talk on her work applying ZooMS to archaeological faunal remains on 2nd November. All are welcome!

The KHO Team will present themselves on the Science Day in Kiel on the 29th September! We invite you to come by and visit us at the Wissenschaftspark.

Sophia Politt has finished her Master thesis titled: “Herbivore teeth from Pniel 6, South Africa. Environmental reconstruction via species classification and stable isotope analysis”.
Read the abstract here.

Rowena Winterhalder has finished her Master thesis titled: “Treasure between rubble: Lithics from Itireleng and Maralaleng, southern Kalahari, Botswana”.
Read the abstract here.

We will be presenting at the XXI INQUA Congress (https://inquaroma2023.org/) in Rome. Catch Inèz Faul et al. Poster “A Geoarchaeological investigation into the depositional and environmental context of southern Kalahari pan sediments in the Kgalagadi District, Botswana” and Michaela Ecker et al. talk “Palaeoenvironment during the Middle Stone Age in interior South Africa based on n-alkane stable isotope records”.

View here the Post of the German Embassy about their visit to the KHO Project on the field!

We are looking forward to the visit of Dr. Manuel Will (University of Tübingen) in Kiel. Dr. Will will hold a presentation on “The evolution of Homo sapiens in Africa – an archaeological perspective from the Middle Stone Age” on the 20th April, 4 – 5 pm in the Johanna-Mestorf-Hörsaal of the Institute for Pre- and Protohistory of University Kiel. Everybody is welcome to join!

We welcome Daniela Engelhart as new student research assistant on our team!

NEW! StoryMap “History and Archaology of Pniel 6, South Africa”. Learn about research in an interactive way. Also available in German.

On 27 May 2022 Inèz Faul presented her paper: “The Geoarchaeology of the southern Kalahari Pans: The case of the Tsabong Early and Middle Stone Age landscapes” at the Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists (ASAPA) online conference.

Some information about our projects in now available in Afrikaans. We are working on translating more of the homepage.

We welcome to the team our Kiel University Master students Helena Pribliczki, Sophia Politt (both MINERVA Project) and Rowena Winterhalder (KHO Project).

We successfully finished our first KHO project field season in the Kgalagadi district of Botswana in January 2022. More information coming soon.

Welcome to Inez Faul as PhD student to Kiel University and the KHO project from 15. October 2021!

Welcome to Helena Pribliczki as student assisstant to the KHO project from 1. September 2021!

View the press release of Kiel University for our project start here. 

We are looking for a PhD student in Geoarchaeology/Physical Geography/Quaternary Science to join the team. Application deadline is 21st May 2021.