Sarah K Hlubik

SARAH HLUBIK, George Washington University, Washington, DC, was awarded a grant in August 2020 to aid research on “Finding Prometheus: Investigating fire on the Koobi Fora Landscape between 2.1-1 Million Years Ago.” Funding from this grant supported research into the origins of humanly controlled fire. The primary goals of this grant were to support museum research in Nairobi at the National Museums of Kenya (NMK), where important archaeological collections are held. While COVID restrictions were in place, and travel was impossible, researchers at the NMK organized and re-cataloged collections, evaluated artifacts for visual evidence of thermal alteration, took and analyzed samples from paleosol sample blocks, and performed limited fieldwork. After restrictions were lifted, and safe CIVID-measures were in place, the remainder of the funding partially supported fieldwork to collect more sediment samples. Results of the cataloging and analysis of collections housed in the museum found several dozen potential thermally altered artifacts and yielded cataloged information for 12 sites within the 2-1-million-year time period. While most analyses are ongoing at this time, evidence from plant microfossils and microcharcoal indicates a positive association of fire with archaeological occurrences.