View from the Muringa locality near the town of Moiben, Kenya.
Last month, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s Curator of Human Evolution, Dr. Elizabeth (Ebeth) Sawchuk, traveled to western Kenya to complete the first phase of fieldwork for a new international research project. The Sirikwa Highland Archaeological Research Project, or SHARP, is co-led by Dr. Sawchuk and Dr. Steven Goldstein of the University of Pittsburgh. Over the next few years, the team will investigate the origins of pastoralism—a way of life centered around herding cattle, sheep, and goats—in eastern Africa and the transition from the Pastoral Neolithic to the Pastoral Iron Age thousands of years ago.
At the center of the project are the “Sirikwa Holes,” mysterious earthen structures found on the Uasin Gishu plateau of western Kenya. Known to archaeologists since the 1960s, these features are thought to date to the Iron Age, but major questions remain about who built them, how they were used, and what they can reveal about the Sirikwa people. People living in Uasin Gishu today have their own stories and theories on the Sirikwa, and this work responds to community interest in investigating these features archaeologically.
Left: Dr. Sawchuk's team excavates a cairn during fieldwork in Kenya.
Right: The team's work included high-resolution mapping, pictured above at one of the cairns.
This season’s fieldwork focused on the Muringa/Bidii locality near the town of Moiben. The team investigated Holocene deposits at Muringa Rockshelter, several well-preserved Sirikwa structures, and nearby mortuary cairns (piles of stone, often containing burials). Their work included survey and high-resolution mapping, excavation, flotation to recover charred plant remains, and sampling for radiocarbon dating and isotopic and ancient DNA analysis.
Following the field season, Dr. Sawchuk’s team continued with cataloging and museum-based analysis at the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi, where Dr. Sawchuk is a research affiliate. The data collected this season will contribute archaeo-botanical and -zoological analyses of what people were cultivating and eating, bioarchaeological investigations of who created and used these sites, and radiocarbon dating and artifact analysis to understand the cultural context. As the project continues, this data will hopefully allow researchers to begin unraveling the mysteries of the Sirikwa Holes and the people who built them.
From left to right: Pittsburgh Ph.D. student and CMNH research associate Christine Chepkorir, Kirtlandia archaeology intern Maxine Trujillo, Dr. Elizabeth (Ebeth) Sawchuk, and Kirtlandia bioarchaeology intern Paige Pemble.
In addition to Drs. Sawchuk and Goldstein, the SHARP 2026 field team brought together two Kirtlandia interns from the Museum, two Kenyan graduate students, an intern from the National Museums of Kenya, and various local collaborators. This year’s Kirtlandia interns included Maxine Trujillo, an anthropology and biology student from the University of Texas at El Paso, and Paige Pemble, an anthropologist from Western Michigan University with a background in art and archaeological illustration. Both graduated with bachelor’s degrees just before embarking on this field season in Kenya.
Also joining the team was Christine Chepkorir, a second-year Ph.D. student at the University of Pittsburgh and a Museum Research Associate. Originally from Kenya, Chepkorir is an archaeologist who studies the transition to the Iron Age in eastern Africa through ancient human remains, with a particular interest in signs of stress and disease among ancient pastoralist communities. Chepkorir has been working with Dr. Sawchuk in Kenya since 2022.
For the students and early-career researchers involved, this field season offered crucial hands-on experience in excavation, analysis, collaboration, and public outreach. The Museum’s Kirtlandia Internship Program offers paid summer internships to undergraduate students, allowing them to gain hands-on experience and learn what it’s like to work as a researcher and museum professional. The Cleveland Museum of Natural History Kirtlandia Society (now Friends of CMNH) has sponsored this program since 1980, raising money to cover each intern's salary, expenses, and tax obligations—supporting hundreds of interns since the program’s launch.
Additionally, this is the fourth year Kirtlandia interns have travelled to Kenya courtesy of the Barna-Pomeranz Endowment established through the Museum, which covers travel costs for interns to participate in fieldwork in Africa. At a time when paid archaeological internships are exceedingly rare, yet fieldwork is a prerequisite for most graduate programs, these kind of opportunities provide a lifeline for the next generation of scientists.
