Since his first year as an undergraduate student of Egyptology, Professor Dominic Stratford was particularly interested in the context of the artefacts we studied and the role of the landscape on shaping the archaeological record. This interest would shape his career as he started his post-graduate work analysing Earlier Stone Age technology at the Sterkfontein Caves, South Africa. The fossiliferous deposits that have accumulated inside the caves over the last 3.5 million years are famous for their large assemblages of hominins, stone tools and associated fauna that document the evolution of our hominin ancestors, their lithic technology and the changing local ecology. The deposits are equally renowned for their stratigraphic complexity. The challenges related to interpreting the fossil and artefactual records at the site inspired him to focus his PhD entirely on stratigraphy and formation processes of some of the deepest, unexplored deposits. Site formation studies are inherently multi-disciplinary and the underground sedimentary record lends itself to innovative combinations of diverse analytical applications that draw on a suite of traditional palaeoanthropological approaches, like taxonomy and taphonomy; archaeological approaches, like high-resolution piece plotting and spatial analyses; and earth science approaches, including karstology, multiscale sedimentology, fabric analysis and geochemistry. The goal of these studies is to develop cohesive depositional histories and stratigraphic frameworks that enable evidence to be associated across space and time within a context of cumulative modification processes. In his capacity as a geoarchaeologist, he apply these analyses to numerous southern African rockshelters and caves. In his capacity as director of research at the Sterkfontein Caves, his goal is to facilitate new and innovative research on all evidence, from multi-scale analysis of StW 573 to augmented reality applications in science education. Here, he is happy when applying integrative analytical tools to new and old fossil and artefactual assemblages and their contexts as we continue to explore the cave’s deep and rich deposits and the fossils that have already been yielded.
