Research
My research focuses on the impacts of climatic change and variability on human evolution, with a particular emphasis on the evolution of behavioural plasticity and its relationship to the archaeological and fossil records of hominin dispersal. My five current PhD students conduct research in areas ranging from the archaeological correlates of demographic variation to the environmental bases of population structure in the Middle Stone Age of eastern Africa.
Variability in the Eastern African Middle Stone Age
Working in collaboration with Dr James Blinkhorn, I am analysing patterns of lithic variability in the Middle Stone Age of Eastern Africa in relation to climatic, environmental, geographic, and temporal differences between sites and assemblages. This research is now being extended in collaboration with Lucy Timbrell to examine indices of habitat suitability through time and the effects of river networks on the archaeological similarities between assemblages.
Quantifying palaeoclimatic variability
Most contemporary hypotheses concerning the effects of palaeoclimatic fluctuation on evolving hominins stress the importance of variability (short-term fluctuations) as opposed to change (longer-term trends), yet there exist no objective methods for decomposing empirical palaeoclimatic records into these two components. This research uses methods from time-series analysis to quantify the differences between change and variability, and to measure their relative importance throughout the course of human evolution.
Hominin Life History and Rates of Evolution
Over the course of hominin evolution the rates at which we reproduce have slowed; so, necessarily, have the rates at which we produce genetic variation - the raw material for evolutionary change. Cultural evolution has accelerated so as to make up for this biological deficit. This project aims to reconstruct life histories and evolutionary rates for the hominins, and in doing so to predict key changes in the rate and complexity of cultural evolution.
Research grants
A 500,000-year environmental record from Chew Bahir, south Ethiopia: testing hypotheses of climate-driven human evolution, innovation, and dispersal
NATURAL ENVIRONMENT RESEARCH COUNCIL
October 2014 - February 2018
"Unfamiliar Landscapes": from foraging to farming in Central Anatolia, Turkey
LEVERHULME TRUST (UK)
May 2013 - July 2015
Research collaborations
Robin Dunbar
The University of Oxford
Ellie Pearce
University of Oxford
Amy Schreier
Duke University
Fiona Coward
Royal Holloway and Bedford New College