A long-standing archaeological partnership in Ethiopia will take an important step forward this winter as Anthropology Professor Michael Rogers prepares to bring the first graduate student from Southern to the Gona research site.
Rogers and Natalina Portillo Corrales, a student in the Archaeology and Cultural Resource Management master’s program, will travel January 5–February 14 to support ongoing fieldwork in the Afar region. While Southern undergraduates have participated in this project for years, this marks the graduate program’s first direct involvement at the site—reflecting the program’s growth and the expanding research pathways available to Southern students.
The team will work at the Kilaitoli site complex, a newly identified area that includes human burials dated to roughly 13,000 years ago. Early findings suggest significant potential for new discoveries related to early habitation, resource use, and cultural behavior in the Horn of Africa.
The Gona Project has been funded for more than two decades by the Leakey Foundation, with additional support from Spanish government agencies and CSU-AAUP internal research grants. Student travel is coordinated through the Office of International Education.
Rogers notes that bringing a graduate student into the field represents a “big moment” for the master’s program, opening doors for original research on the Gona collections and strengthening Southern’s role in this internationally recognized work.
