The University of Manchester

Department Member, Archaeology

Other Affiliations: University of Bristol, Archaeology and Anthropology
The University of Sheffield, Archaeology
University of Southampton, Centre for Archaeology of Human Origins (CAHO)

Research Associate, QAEJ project

Thesis Title: Neanderthals in Britain: Late Mousterian Archaeology in Landscape Context

About

I am an archaeological researcher, specialising in the Palaeolithic period and lithic analysis, especially European Quaternary ("Ice Age") research.

I am a Research Associate with the multidisciplinary QAEJ (Quaternary Archaeology and Environment of Jersey project, http://quaternaryjersey.wordpress.com/). I am currently applying for postdoctoral funding to perform the first full analysis of the Late Middle Palaeolithic (late Neanderthal) archaeology from the celebrated site of La Cotte de St Brelade, Jersey, as one research strand within JIAOS. The project is supported by UCL, CAHO at Southampton University, AHOB at the British Museum and Universities of Manchester and Lampeter. Fieldwork began in July 2010 on Mesolithic and Late Upper Palaeolithic sites in Jersey, as well as the first new fieldwork at the site of La Cotte de St Brelade for over 20 years. This Middle Palaeolithic (Neanderthal) site, in a large ravine or collapsed cave system on the south-west coast, is uniquely important because of its deep sequence of occupation through more than 100,000 years of changes in climate, sea-level and landscape. Jersey went from an island to a plateau on the north-western peninsula of the European continent several times over this long period.
Neanderthal occupation at the site occurs in both warm and cold phases, and documents their evolution as a species. There are in total over 120,000 artefacts which were excavated between the end of the 19th century, and the mid-1980s from the site, as well as evidence of the use of fires, and of major hunting episodes of mammoth and woolly rhinoceros.
My research is on the upper layers, from the late Pleistocene (between around 100-40,000 years BP), which contained around 6000 late Neanderthal lithic artefacts with fauna, but were excavated by early researchers and are consequently less well known than the deeper layers which were excavated in the 1960s. My research will extract the greatest information possible from these artefacts using up-to-date lithic analysis techniques, and with other members of JIAOS, develop a model to re-contextualise them through new investigations of in-situ deposits remaining at the site.

I have recently begun several collaborative projects.
I co-direct the Pleistocene Isotopes and Migration Project, investigating the scales of movement of Pleistocene fauna and Neanderthals using isotopic analysis with Dr Geoff Smith (UCL) and Dr Sarah Viner (University of Sheffield). We have just received funding in 2011 from the Societe Jersiaise which will allow us to begin pilot sampling on material from La Cotte de St Brelade.

I recently gave a paper at the CAHO10 conference (celebrating ten years of research at the Centre for Archaeology of Human Origins University of Southampton), on work exploring the evidence for extended social networks in late Neanderthals, based on large raw material transfers, and the capacity of distinctive regional technocomplexes to be adaptations for social signalling. This paper, titled "Creating Country: Late Middle Palaeolithic Landscape Enculturation" will be published in te volume of conference proceedings.

In 2009 I began a reassessment of the lithics from the MIS7 cave Pontnewydd in Wales, with Beccy Scott at the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain Leverhulme-funded project.

I wrote my PhD thesis on the British Late Middle Palaeolithic, which aimed to understand the re-occupation by Neanderthals around 60,000 years BP. It focused on the lithic assemblages from early-mid MIS 3 (60-45,000 years BP), looking at the typology and technology from a chaine operatoire perspective, moving between two scales: individual site examination focused on situational responses, while inter-site comparisons explored the wider patterning of raw material nature and availability on technological organisation in the landscape.
Some of the sites I studied for this project included Creswell Crags, Nottinghamshire, an internationally recognised limestone gorge with four caves inhabited by Neanderthals (http://www.creswell-crags.org.uk/Home.aspx), and Lynford Quarry, discovered in 2003, which is a preserved palaeo-channel filled with organic material and thousands of wondefully preserved lithic artefacts in association with mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, reindeer and horse remains (http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/conWebDoc.3892).

I find Neanderthals fascinating as they provide us with an "alternate universe" with which to investigate hunter-gatherer adaptations, and reponses to very varied climatic conditions, not to mention the challenge of trying to understand how they saw and experienced their world of intensely physical and dangerous activities, and intimately social lives. Their success as a species for hundreds of thousands of years, and co-existence with modern humans for some 15,000 years raises many questions relating to their disappearance.

I was trained in lithic (stone tool) analysis at the Centre for Human Origins, University of Southampton, for my MA degree (http://www.soton.ac.uk/archaeology/caho/).

My other research interests include the evolution of technology, specifically the development of composite technology, and the social implications of this, as well as conditions of innovation in other materials such as fibre and synthetics.
I am also tangentially interested in the archaeology of the very recent past, specifically the material remains that humans from the 20th century have left on the surface of and in orbit around other planets and moons in the solar system, and the potential for recording and preserving this, as well as the cultural implications of it.

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