Thembi Russell

Position: Lecturer
Qualification: PhD, Southampton, UK 2002
Department: Archaeology
Phone: +27-11-717 6060
Email: thembiwe.russell@wits.ac.za 

Room: 210, 2^nd Floor, Origins Centre

Research Interests

My research interests include the rock art, ethnography and archaeology of east and southern African pastoralists and hunter-gatherers, chronology and ways of approaching it in rock art, and GIS.  I currently have three projects, the first is the compilation and analysis of a geo-referenced database of first farmer radiocarbon dates for the regions associated with the expansion of Bantu language group-speaking people in Sub-Saharan Africa to estimate spread dynamics using GIS techniques in collaboration with UCL, the second is to understand the rock art in the Lokori area of Northern Kenya in collaboration with the National Museums of Kenya and the third is studying paintings of domestic sheep in the rock art of South Africa.

I teach two undergraduate courses; ‘First Food Production and the Rise of Civilizations’ and ‘Time & Space and Archaeology’.

Publications

2013. Through the skin: exploring pastoralist marks and their meanings to understand parts of East African rock art. Journal of Social Archaeology 13:1.

2012. No one said it would be easy. Ordering San painting using the Harris Matrix: dangerously fallacious? A reply to David Pearce. South African Archaeological Bulletin 67 (196):267-272.

2012. The position of rock art. A consideration of how GIS can contribute to the understanding of the age and authorship of rock art. In Smith, B., Morris, D. & Helskog, K. (eds) Working with Rock Art. Johannesburg: Wits University Press: Johannesburg, pp 36-45

2011. With Kiura, P. A re-consideration of the rock engravings at the burial site of Namoratung’a south, Northern Kenya and their relationship to modern Turkana livestock brands. South African Archaeological Bulletin 66 (194).

2009. With Steele, J. A geo-referenced radiocarbon database for Early Iron Age sites in sub-Saharan Africa: initial analysis. Southern African Humanities 21 (1): 327-344.

2004. The spatial analysis of radiocarbon databases: the spread of the first farmers to Europe and of the fat-tailed sheep in southern Africa. BAR International Series 1294. Oxford: Archaeopress.

2004. With Steele J. Visualising the Neolithic transition in Europe. In Higham, T.F.G, Bronk Ramsey, C and Owen, D.C. (eds.) 43-52, Radiocarbon and Archaeology: proceedings of the Fourth symposium, Oxford 2002. Oxbow books: Oxford.

2003. With Gkiasta, M., Shennan, S. & Steele, J. Origins of European agriculture: the radiocarbon record revisited. Antiquity 77: 45-62.

2002. With Steele, J. Visualising the Neolithic transition in Europe. In Burenhult, G. (ed.) Archaeological Informatics: Pushing the envelope – CAA 2001 – Computer applications and quantitative methods in Archaeology, Proceedings of the 29th Conference, Gotland, Sweden, April 2001. British Archaeological Reports S1016. Archaeopress: Oxford.

2000. The application of the Harris Matrix to San rock art at Main Caves North. The South African Archaeological Bulletin 55: 60 - 70.