Dr Thomas Biginagwa hopes his research on the archaeology of climate change in the Serengeti Basin in Tanzania can inform current wildlife conservation policies in sub-Saharan Africa.

Thomas is a Gonville & Caius College Bye-Fellow in 2023–24, on a 12-month Visiting Fellowship from the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

“Archaeology can go further back in time to tell how climate change was and how humans adapted to it in the past, hence providing lessons on how to deal with it today and in the future,” he says.

“Colleagues in the natural sciences have generated palaeoclimate data for East Africa from geoarchives close to the Serengeti Basin where I am working, revealing how the climate in the region has been changing for the last 2000 years. I am comparing this data with various forms of archaeological material to understand how human activities and settlements were changing from time to time in response to climate change.

“For instance, my research reveals 200 years of various attempts to cope with the excessive drought in the Serengeti Basin from the 15th century to the 17th century and again during the 19th century. These include adopting irrigation agriculture by the Sonjo people in Engaruka, the southeastern part of the basin (15th–17th centuries), while some migrated northward in the direction of Lake Victoria, where there is always little rainfall, even during excessive dry seasons.”

Pictured left: Late Urewe tradition ceramics attesting the likely presence of farming communities (Early Iron Age) in Western Serengeti by c. 1800  BP (before present); Dr Biginagwa and his research team (UDSM students) in Western Serengeti, August 2023

Thomas contends that many wildlife conservation policies in Africa have failed and, in most cases, worsened the situation by causing endless conflicts between the government conservation agencies and local people. He adds that this is because of a series of misunderstandings about the nature of African environments and human-wildlife interactions.

According to Thomas, these policies are an extension of 20th century colonial conservation philosophy, which was driven by a restricted set of ‘environmental narratives’, including a tendency to regard Indigenous subsistence strategies in the wildlife concentration areas (for example, agriculture, pastoralism, and hunting) as wasteful practices that jeopardise wildlife ecology. Closely related was the belief that surviving areas of high biodiversity and/or dense concentrations of wildlife represent the remnants of ‘pristine’ environments barely touched by human activities and from which humans had to be evicted if their long-term survival was to be ensured. Biginagwa says the Serengeti National Park and adjacent wildlife protected areas were established in that way, leading to endless conflicts to date.

“Certainly, it is not the Maasai who disturb wild animals in their natural environment, but tourism, with thousands of vehicles on safari, the building of hotels in those areas, and trophy hunting,” Thomas adds.

There appear to be similarities elsewhere, such as in North America with Native American groups and in Australia with Aboriginal communities.

Thomas' research examines these still-prevailing colonial ‘wisdom’ in wildlife conservation approaches by, among other things, revealing archaeologically the antiquity and nature of humans co-habitation with wildlife harmoniously in the Serengeti Basin and how humans coped with climate change scenarios in the past. Ultimately, he seeks to inform how to balance the conservation of wildlife with the needs of the people who have lived in those wildlife-concentrated areas for thousands of years. 

Thomas joined the University of Dar es Salaam in 2006 and began his PhD at the University of York in 2007, where he explored the nineteenth-century caravan trade and its associated environmental impacts, which has occupied much of his research to date.

He has enjoyed the academic freedom in his position at Caius and the interdisciplinary community of the College and the wider University of Cambridge, enjoying academic events at the Centre for African Studies, the Archaeology Department, and the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

“It’s very vibrant,” he says. “You feel that you are very well engaged. That will keep me going even after my time here at the college.”