Speaker: Dr. Tim Gross

Title: Back to Africa Again: More thoughts on the Archaeology of the Forgotten Continent

In July of 2017, I was lucky enough to return to Uganda for a second time, this time assisting Dr. Jennifer Parkinson with her research on taphonomy. She was examining the bones of the animals killed by lions to see how they compare to damage found on bones scavenged from by early human ancestors from lion kill sites. Much of our time was spent following lions around and examining their kills. On the way we saw some beautiful country and amazing wildlife. We also encountered a few archaeological sites along the way, and I was able to see the results of some of the work I did in 2013 dealing with development in the Lake Albert region of Uganda. The talk will conclude with some observations on African archaeology today.

Author’s Biography

Tim Gross is a San Diego area archaeologist who earned his BA in Anthropology from San Diego State University and his MA and PhD from Washington State University. His masters research was in the archaeology of northwestern Egypt, and he has worked in Uganda both as a consulting archaeologist (2013) and as a research assistant (2017). His archaeological career started over 50 years ago volunteering on projects with the San Diego Museum of Man and San Diego State University. Most of his research has been in southern California, although he has also worked in Washington State, Colorado, and Arizona. He was taught at a number of schools over the years, and he is currently an Assistant Professor at San Diego City College. At City College he is involved with the Certificate program in Archaeology, teaching both the Archaeological Field Methods course at the Peñasquitos Adobe and the Artifact Analysis class.