Matthew Caruana
There’s a lot to be learned from the tools our ancestors used
“Every time I set foot on Swartkrans, I am filled with a sense of calm and awe. I think of the legacy of research, started by Robert Broom and John Robinson, then elevated by Bob Brain and carried on by Travis Pickering. I am now intertwined in this history, which fills me with a deep sense of honour and respect.”
For Dr Matthew V Caruana, a lecturer in archaeology at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and a specialist in Earlier Stone Age technology, the significance of where he works looms large.
“The prehistoric sites in the Cradle of Humankind never cease to amaze me. Over the past decade, research at various localities in this area have recovered some of the most complete early hominin skeletal remains and provided invaluable insights into the diversity of species that shared the landscape for the past three million years.
“Also, the wealth of stone tool assemblages recovered from both caves and open-air sites has provided a fantastic perspective on the ways of life of these early hominin species, including their capacity to learn and innovate in tool-making activities,” he says.
A research collaborator at both Swartkrans and the Sterkfontein caves, Caruana oversees excavations at Swartkrans and is involved in projects exploring the oldest sedimentary units at the site, the Member 1 Hanging Remnant, and a newly identified cave system called the Andrew Phaswana site, which is a part of the Swartkrans II complex. He also collaborates on a project exploring the Member 3 sedimentary unit at Sterkfontein Caves.
Caruana arrived in South Africa in 2009 to complete a PhD in palaeoanthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand, but he soon found his true passion was in studying Earlier Stone Age tools, and changed over to a project in archaeology with Professor Kathy Kuman.
“Kathy had been intimately involved in research at both Sterkfontein and Swartkrans caves for many years. At the time, I met [Sterkfontein research coordinator] Professor Dominic Stratford, who was finishing his PhD – also supervised by Kathy – and we became fast friends,” he recalls.
After graduating in 2015, he moved over to UJ to take up a postdoctoral post focused on the Drimolen fossil site, about 6km north of Sterkfontein, but in 2017 Stratford spoke to Pickering about Caruana overseeing excavations and field research at Swartkrans.
“I jumped at the opportunity and have never looked back. From 2017, I have managed field research at Swartkrans Cave, which has led to a wealth of interesting finds and great research collaborations. I have excavated fossil and stone tool deposits at the site, which has led to exciting discoveries – still under study – that will hopefully revitalise scientific interests in Swartkrans,” Caruana says.
His passion for his work, which sheds invaluable light on the hominins who inhabited the Cradle of Humankind, is undeniable.
“I absolutely love digging out stone tools from archaeological sites that haven’t seen the light of day for hundreds of thousands to millions of years. I love to study how they were made and used, which provides a unique window into the minds and lives of their makers,” he states.