Regional Project Manager for Botswana and Zimbabwe
Faye is the MAEASaM Regional Project Manager based at the Origins Centre, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. She holds a BA in Archaeology and Geography, and an MSc and PhD in African Archaeology, all from the University of Witwatersrand.
Faye completed her BA (2010) in Archaeology and Geography at the University of the Witwatersrand before going on to complete her master’s (2014) then her doctoral research (2020). Her studies have brought her to working with rock art in northern Kenya and within the World Heritage Site of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg of South Africa. Faye’s doctoral research focused on the compilation and mapping of a large collection of archaeological sites covering Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and parts of Zambia, using GIS. During this time, Faye worked extensively with the archaeological collections housed at Wits University (2014-2020) where she managed conservation and cataloguing alongside South Africa’s national legislation. In her current position with the MAEASaM project, she is coordinating the work being carried out for Botswana and Zimbabwe.
I have a long-standing interest in the early spread of African crops, metalworking and livestock-keeping in southern Africa with a particular fascination in the arrival of Khoe herders and the ephemeral markers that these communities have left behind. I believe that maps often speak louder than words and so I advocate an approach that uses spatial and temporal analyses to document southern Africa’s history. GIS provides a hugely important technique in this endeavour.
In her free time, Faye is an avid ceramic painter and collector of books.
Read more about Faye on Research Gate.