Research Interests:
Human evolution; Palaeolithic archaeology; primate tool-use; stone tool function and technology; microscopic use-wear and residues.
Primary Geographic Areas
South and southeast Asia, Australia, Oceania, Tropical Africa, Brazil.
Current Grants
2012-2016 European Research Council Starting Grant, 'Primate Archaeology: an evolutionary context for the emergence of technology'
2012-2015 Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship, 'Functional analysis of Homo floresiensis stone tools' (declined)
2011-2012 Arts and Humanities Research Council Early Career Fellowship, 'Stone Technology in Late Pleistocene India: A new perspective on the dispersal of Homo sapiens out of Africa'
- 2010-2011 John Fell Fund, Oxford ‘Capuchin archaeology: exploring the adaptive role of stone technology among wild capuchin monkeys, Boa Vista, Brazil’
2010-2011 NERC Isotope Geosciences Facilities ‘Proximal-distal ash correlation using 40Ar/39Ar as a provenance tool: insights into the Toba super-eruption and its impact on human populations and environments’
2010 British Academy Overseas Conference Grant ‘Microscopic residue analysis of modern and ancient chimpanzee pounding tools: defining a primate archaeological signature’
2010-2013 British Academy International Partnership- “Out of Africa, Into South Asia: Building a collaborative understanding of the earliest humans in India”
- 2009-2010 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
- “Hominin faunal exploitation in Late Pleistocene India”, Principal Investigator
Current Projects
- Primate Archaeology (PI)
- Microscopic residue and use-wear analysis of Pleistocene stone artefacts from Liang Bua, Indonesia (with C. Lentfer [PI] and G. Robertson, University of Queensland)
- Use-wear and residue analysis of stone artefacts from the Gibraltar caves (with C. Finlayson and the Gibraltar Museum)