Lucy to Language: The Archaeology of the Social Brain

British Academy Centenary Research Project.

Aims

The social brain has become iconic for what it is to be human. Indeed, it bridges both our evolutionary history and our contemporary experience in a way that no other concept does. The Centenary Project - a collaboration between archaeologists and psychologists - set itself the remit of exploring these two axes of the human experience.

The project aimed to explore how the early hominid brain evolved from its essentially apelike beginnings among the earliest australopithecines (circa 5 million years ago) to the modern human potential of the “Upper Palaeolithic Revolution” (circa 50,000 years ago) and its final expression in the dramatic social and economic changes of the last 10,000 years.

By bringing together Palaeolithic archaeologists and evolutionary and social psychologists, together with cognate interests in behavioural ecology, social and biological anthropology, sociology, linguistics, history and musicology, the project aimed to open up an entirely new interdisciplinary approach not only to archaeology and psychology but also more widely to the humanities and social sciences. By focussing on the inferences we can make from primary evidence, such as stone tools, and on what we can infer about social and cognitive phenomena from living humans and other primates, the project aimed to explore what it means to be human, and when and how we, as a species, came to be that way.

Funding

The Lucy-to-Language Project was funded by a seven-year programme grant from the British Academy awarded to Professor Robin Dunbar FBA, Professor Clive Gamble FBA and Professor John Gowlett, following a competitive call to celebrate the centenary of the Academy’s establishment in 1902.

Collaborators

The collaborative project involved the following institutions:

The project was originally a collaborative venture between the University of Liverpool and Royal Holloway, London University, but additional partnerships were created with staff at the University of Southampton and the University of Kent at Canterbury.

The Centenary Project was formally launched in October 2003 and formally ended in September 2010.

Organisation

The Centenary Project has three Directors:

Professor Robin Dunbar FBA (School of Biological Sciences, University of Liverpool)
Professor Clive Gamble FBA (Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London)
Professor John Gowlett (Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology [ACE] (University of Liverpool)).

Its management structure consists of two principal committees:

Administrative Committee

Day-to-day management of the Centenary Project, including selection of new projects to be taken forward and the allocation of funds, is the responsibility of the Administrative Committee. The Administrative Committee is also responsible for ensuring that individual projects are successfully completed; to facilitate this, each project is under the direct supervision of at least one of the Directors.

Membership of the Administrative Committee:

Professor Robin Dunbar FBA (School of Biological Sciences, University of Liverpool)
Professor Clive Gamble FBA (Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London)
Professor John Gowlett (Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology [ACE] (University of Liverpool)).

Management Committee

Responsibility for overseeing the running of the Centenary Project rests with the Management Committee. The Committee’s remit is to provide both strategic advice and a channel of reporting back to the Research Committee of the British Academy.

Membership of the Management Committee:

Professor Robin Dunbar FBA (School of Biological Sciences, University of Liverpool)
Professor Clive Gamble FBA (Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London)
Professor John Gowlett (Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology [ACE] (University of Liverpool))
Professor Wendy James FBA (Oxford University)
Viscount Runciman FBA (Cambridge University)
Dr Ken Emond (British Academy secretariat).

People

Directors:

Professor Robin Dunbar FBA (School of Biological Sciences, University of Liverpool)
Professor Clive Gamble FBA (Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London)
Professor John Gowlett (Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology [ACE], University of Liverpool).

Fellows:

Professor Leslie Aiello (President of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, New York, USA)
Dr Holly Arrow (Department of Psychology, University of Oregon)
Professor Filippo Aureli (Co-director of the Research Centre in Evolutionary Anthropology and Palaeoecology, School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University)
Professor Larry Barham (Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology [ACE], University of Liverpool)
Professor Alan Barnard (Department of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburg)
Dr Margaret Clegg (Head of Human Remains Unit, Natural History Museum, London [formerly at CAHO, University of Southampton 2003-2005])
Professor Robin Crompton (Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology, University of Liverpool)
Dr William Davies (Archaeology, University of Southampton)
Dr Mandy Korstjens (School of Conservation Sciences, University of Bournemouth)
Professor Bob Layton (Department of Anthropology, University of Durham)
Dr Julia Lehmann (Roehampton University)
Dr Stephen Lycett (University of Kent at Canterbury)
Dr Yvonne Marshall (Archaeology, University of Southampton)
Dr John McNabb (Archaeology, University of Southampton)
Dr Jessica Pearson (Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology [ACE], University of Liverpool)
Dr Susanne Shultz (Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester)
Dr Anthony Sinclair (Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology [ACE], University of Liverpool)
Dr James Steele (Institute of Archaeology, University College London)
Professor Mark van Vugt (University of Amsterdam)
Dr Noreen von Cramon-Taubadel (University of Kent at Canterbury)
Dr Anna Wallette (Department of History, University of Lund, Sweden)
Dr Victoria Winton (Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology [ACE], (University of Liverpool)
Dr Sonia Zakrzewski (Archaeology, University of Southampton).

Postdoctoral Research Fellows:

Dr Quentin Atkinson (University of Auckland, New Zealand [funded by EU-FP6 EX-REL Project])
Dr Oliver Curry (Institute of Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford [2008-2011] [funded by EU-FP7 SOCIALNETS Project])
Dr Max Burton (Institute of Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford [2008-2009])
Dr Fiona Coward (Department of Geography, Royal Holloway London University [2005-2008])
Dr Matt Grove (Institute of Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford [2008-2010])
Dr Jane Hallos (Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology [ACE], University of Liverpool [2003-2005[)
Dr Julia Lehmann (School of Biological Sciences, University of Liverpool [2004-2007] [later a Senior Lecturer, Roehampton University])
Dr Anna Machin (Institute of Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford)
Dr Stephen Lycett (Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology [ACE], University of Liverpool) [2007-2008[) [later a lecturer at the University of Kent at Canterbury])
Dr Natalie Uomini, (Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology [ACE], University of Liverpool) [2008-2010])
Dr Sam Roberts, Institute of Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford [2006-2009] [funded by EPSRC/ESRC TESS Project].

Research Assistants:

Anna Frangou (Institute of Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford).