‘Unravelling the Distant Past and the Origin of our Species’ Study Day
Saturday 23January 2016
10.00-16:00
Lecture Theatre B, Building 65
Avenue Campus
09:50 / Arrival and refreshments10:00 / Introduction to ancient human (hominin) behaviour and landscapes
10:15 / Time and Change in early hominin landscape archaeology
Dr John McNabb, Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins
11:15 / Coffee Break
11:30 / Neanderthals of the Channel River Valley
Dr Andrew Shaw, Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins
12:30 / Lunch (Cafe area)
13:15 / Reconstructing Neanderthals in the Landscape
Dr Kristen Heasley, Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins
14:15 / Coffee Break
14:30 / How many Neanderthals? Using different lines of evidence to estimate the size and organisation of Neanderthal and early modern human populations.
Dr William Davies, Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins
15:30 / Final discussion
16:00 / End of day
Abstracts
Neanderthals of the Channel River Valley
Dr Andrew Shaw, Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins
Historically Neanderthals were popularly viewed as shorthand for all that is brutish and primitive. However, archaeologists now understand them to have been incredibly well-adapted northern European hunter-gatherers, with a developmental trajectory all of their own. Whereas once academic attention largely focussed on how and when Neanderthals died out, this talk focuses on how they lived and came to be the longest-surviving human species to occupy northern Europe. Using examples drawn from the latest research in the English Channel region, including the Channel Island of Jersey, this talk explores what archaeology can tell us about these other humans: how they hunted, the technology they used, and how they moved through their landscapes.
Reconstructing Neanderthals in the Landscape
Dr Kristen Heasley, Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins
Neanderthal artefacts are mostly represented by bones and stones. Stone raw material economy studies are particularly informative and effective, as they can indicate a range of on-site activities, including animal butchery, hide-scraping, and wood-processing. Stone artefacts can also demonstrate Neanderthal activity and presence outside the site, where material traces were not left or preserved, but from where vital resources were procured and transported. Raw material economy studies link the technological record from a site with its ecological context, and suggest that Neanderthal provisioning strategies varied in response to the costs and constraints of mobility and resource procurement within variable landscapes.
How many Neanderthals? Using different lines of evidence to estimate the size and organisation of Neanderthal and early modern human populations
Dr William Davies, Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins
This talk will explore the recent advances in how we study and reconstruct late Neanderthal and early modern human social organisation and interactions. Information can be combined, not only from studies of raw material transport distances and variations in technology and tool-types, but also from ancient genetics and environmental productivity (how many people might reconstructed environments have supported?). Patterns seen in late Neanderthal societies will be compared to the evidence seen in early modern human ones, to discuss how different – or how similar – the two species were.
N.B. The Lifelong Learning team may be photographing this event for use on our website ( twitter (@SotonUniLLL) & Facebook ().If you would prefer not to be included in the photos, please inform one of our organisers