About
Welcome to Archaeology Teahouse, where the mysteries of the past meet the comfort of a warm cup of tea. Our mission is to share the stories of our shared human journey and deep history, inspiring understanding and a connection to our global heritage.
We make science accessible by translating complex archaeological and paleontological findings into engaging blogs and stories that explain exactly why the past matters to our future.
Meet Sandee Oster
Sandee Oster is an archaeologist and science communicator who founded Archaeology Teahouse to bring the ancient world closer to people's lives. She is a PhD candidate at the University of the Witwatersrand, where her research is on what animal bones and stable isotopes reveal about how people lived through the Later Stone Age in southern Africa.
Working inside the field is what started this. She saw how often a genuinely extraordinary discovery failed to reach anyone because it stayed locked behind a journal paywall, written for the twenty people already in the room.
So she writes them up properly. The research below is hers; the stories here are the same instinct pointed at everybody else's.
- Role
- Archaeologist and PhD candidate
- Institution
- University of the Witwatersrand
- Field
- Archaeology — zooarchaeology and stable isotopes
Published research
Peer-reviewed work, newest first. Every entry links to its DOI, the permanent address of the paper itself.
- Oster, S., & Reynard, J. (2026). Taphonomic and Zooarchaeological Analyses of Strathalan Cave A: Hunting Strategies and Environmental Change During the Early to Mid-Holocene at the Foothills of the Drakensberg, South Africa. Journal of African Archaeology, 24, 66–86. https://doi.org/10.1163/21915784-bja10054
- Peña, P., Arriaza, M., Guillemard, I., Croll, K., Lander, F., Reynard, J., Oster, S., et al. (2026). Marshill Rockshelter (Eastern Cape, South Africa): a new late Pleistocene and Holocene archaeological sequence in the Maloti-Drakensberg piedmont. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, 61, 224–271. https://doi.org/10.1080/0067270X.2026.2630553
- Reynard, J., Hattingh, T., Zwane, B., Guillemard, I., Bradfield, J., Woodborne, S., Oster, S., et al. (2026). Continuity and Transition from the Early to Mid-Holocene at the Foothills of the Drakensberg: Preliminary Results from the Current Excavations of Strathalan Cave A, North-Eastern Cape, South Africa. African Archaeological Review, 42, 747–782. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-026-09649-9
- Oster, S., Reynard, J., Cawthra, H., Esteban, I., & Fisher, E. (2024). Late Pleistocene and Holocene fauna from Waterfall Bluff Rock Shelter, Mpondoland, South Africa. South African Journal of Science, 120. https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2024/17449
- Oster, S. (2023). Examining the Remaining Rock Art at Linton, Eastern Cape, and Its Relationship With the Linton Panel at the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town. Thesis. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.27376.88320