Associate Professor Reed Coil, Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Nazarbayev University, has been awarded a competitive research grant from the Leakey Foundation, one of the world’s leading organizations supporting research on human origins and evolution.
The grant will support his project, “Zooarchaeology, Taphonomy, and Site Formation at the Early Pleistocene Archaeological Site at Orozmani, Georgia,” which investigates one of the earliest known hominin sites in Eurasia. This year, the Leakey Foundation selected just 32 projects out of 151 applications submitted by researchers from universities around the world.
The project seeks to better understand how some of the earliest human ancestors lived outside Africa by examining their behavior, subsistence strategies, and interactions with carnivores at the Lower Paleolithic site of Orozmani. The findings will help place the site within the broader story of early human migration into Eurasia.
“Orozmani is one of the oldest archaeological sites in Eurasia and offers a rare opportunity to better understand the earliest stages of human expansion beyond Africa,” said Associate Professor Coil. “Because evidence from this period is limited to only a handful of sites, every new discovery helps us build a clearer picture of the environments early humans inhabited, the animals they interacted with, and how they adapted as they spread across Eurasia.”
Beyond its global significance, the project also has important implications for Kazakhstan. According to Associate Professor Coil, understanding neighboring regions provides a stronger scientific foundation for identifying similarly ancient archaeological sites in Kazakhstan.
“The earliest evidence of human occupation in Kazakhstan is still not well understood, and some recent findings remain the subject of scientific debate,” he said. “A better understanding of the surrounding regions provides a stronger basis for identifying Early Pleistocene sites in Kazakhstan.“
The new project builds on research previously supported through the Nazarbayev University Faculty Development Competitive Research Grants Program (FDCRGP) from 2023 to 2025. That funding enabled field research while also providing hands-on training for NU students in archaeological surveying and data collection.
“This capacity-building effort better prepares future generations of Kazakhstani archaeologists to identify archaeological sites of this age and recognize the stone tools and animal remains associated with Homo erectus,” Reed Coil added.
Last year, Orozmani gained international attention after researchers uncovered a 1.8-million-year-old Homo erectus jawbone.
