Under the direction of Dr. John Harris, Ms Purity Kiura will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. Her project is a study over the annual cycle by direct observation and stable isotope analysis of the food consumption of three groups of people with different subsistence strategies (the Dassanetch, Gabra and El-molo) living today to the East of Lake Turkana in Northern Kenya. The ultimate goal of this study is to provide an interpretive framework for investigating the subsistence strategies and diet of people believed to have occupied the region during the last 10,000 years (Holocene period). These three modern groups are not direct analogues for the Holocene peoples but do have diets similar to those proposed in the region by prior researchers. However, if by direct observations, including the analysis of food residues discarded in garbage pits, and by the study of stable isotope signatures of modern peoples that these are found to be discrete, then it may be possible to identify similar subsistence strategies in the regions Holocene record.
Ms Kiura and her field assistants will conduct daily observations and interviews of the people's dietary behavior (food types, processing, preparing and sharing) while at the same time they will document the food remains that are discarded in garbage pits through the people's food processing and consumption activities. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis to determine the food types consumed will be carried out on the people's hair, bone and teeth from the animals consumed by the people, and also the plants eaten by these animals. Daily weather observations (i.e. rain, humidity, temperature and wind patterns) will also be recorded to provide seasonal changes in the region.
The data collected here will have broad implications beyond setting up a base for the study of the Holocene people's subsistence strategies. The data will also provide novel information on the dietary activities through the annual cycle of three modern groups of people that are poorly studied. Plants and animals in the region are poorly understood and this project will therefore provide very important information to plant physiologists, mammalogists, paleontologists and others. Daily weather records will also prove important to all scientists interested in the region's seasonal changes and effects on the overall environment.
