Penny Spikins

• PhD
• Professor at University of York

Childhood is a core stage in development, essential in the acquisition of social, practical and cultural skills. However, this area receives limited attention in archaeological debate, especially in early prehistory. We here consider Neanderthal childhood, exploring the experience of Neanderthal children using biological, cultural and social eviden...

We are increasingly aware of the role of emotions and emotional construction in social relationships. However, despite their significance, there are few constructs or theoretical approaches to the evolution of emotions that can be related to the prehistoric archaeological record. Whilst we frequently discuss how archaic humans might have thought, h...

In this study we describe new results of excavations in the Dinaledi Subsystem of the Rising Star cave system, South Africa. In two areas within the Hill Antechamber and the Dinaledi Chamber this work uncovered concentrations of abundant Homo naledi fossils including articulated, matrix-supported skeletal regions consistent with rapid covering by s...

Data from recent explorations in the Dinaledi subsystem illustrates one of the earliest examples of a mortuary practice in hominins and offers the earliest evidence of multiple interments and funerary actions, as well as evidence of the early creation of meaning making by a hominin. The hominin undertaking these behaviors was the small-brained Homo...

Recent excavations in the Rising Star Cave System of South Africa have revealed burials of the extinct hominin species Homo naledi. A combination of geological and anatomical evidence shows that hominins dug holes that disrupted the subsurface stratigraphy and interred the remains of H. naledi individuals, resulting in at least two discrete feature...

Recent excavations in the Rising Star Cave System of South Africa have revealed burials of the extinct hominin species Homo naledi. A combination of geological and anatomical evidence shows that hominins dug holes that disrupted the subsurface stratigraphy and interred the remains of H. naledi individuals, resulting in at least two discrete feature...

Data from recent explorations in the Dinaledi subsystem illustrates one of the earliest examples of a mortuary practice in hominins and offers the earliest evidence of multiple interments and funerary actions, as well as evidence of the early creation of meaning making by a hominin. The hominin undertaking these behaviors was the small-brained Homo...

Data from recent explorations in the Dinaledi subsystem illustrates one of the earliest examples of a mortuary practice in hominins and offers the earliest evidence of multiple interments and funerary actions, as well as evidence of the early creation of meaning making by a hominin. The hominin undertaking these behaviors was the small-brained Homo...

Recent excavations in the Rising Star Cave System of South Africa have revealed burials of the extinct hominin species Homo naledi. A combination of geological and anatomical evidence shows that hominins dug holes that disrupted the subsurface stratigraphy and interred the remains of H. naledi individuals, resulting in at least two discrete feature...

We readily accept that it is our emotional connections to the people whom we love and care about that make us human. We sacrifice for our loved ones, feel joy and pain in equal measure with our friends, and even reach out to connect to the lives and wellbeing of people we have never met. However, we rarely think about where these feelings come from...

In Hidden Depths, Professor Penny Spikins explores how our emotional connections have shaped human ancestry. Focusing on three key transitions in human origins, Professor Spikins explains how the emotional capacities of our early ancestors evolved in response to ecological changes, much like similar changes in other social mammals. For each transit...

In Hidden Depths, Professor Penny Spikins explores how our emotional connections have shaped human ancestry. Focusing on three key transitions in human origins, Professor Spikins explains how the emotional capacities of our early ancestors evolved in response to ecological changes, much like similar changes in other social mammals. For each transit...

In Hidden Depths, Professor Penny Spikins explores how our emotional connections have shaped human ancestry. Focusing on three key transitions in human origins, Professor Spikins explains how the emotional capacities of our early ancestors evolved in response to ecological changes, much like similar changes in other social mammals. For each transit...

In Hidden Depths, Professor Penny Spikins explores how our emotional connections have shaped human ancestry. Focusing on three key transitions in human origins, Professor Spikins explains how the emotional capacities of our early ancestors evolved in response to ecological changes, much like similar changes in other social mammals. For each transit...

In Hidden Depths, Professor Penny Spikins explores how our emotional connections have shaped human ancestry. Focusing on three key transitions in human origins, Professor Spikins explains how the emotional capacities of our early ancestors evolved in response to ecological changes, much like similar changes in other social mammals. For each transit...

In Hidden Depths, Professor Penny Spikins explores how our emotional connections have shaped human ancestry. Focusing on three key transitions in human origins, Professor Spikins explains how the emotional capacities of our early ancestors evolved in response to ecological changes, much like similar changes in other social mammals. For each transit...

In Hidden Depths, Professor Penny Spikins explores how our emotional connections have shaped human ancestry. Focusing on three key transitions in human origins, Professor Spikins explains how the emotional capacities of our early ancestors evolved in response to ecological changes, much like similar changes in other social mammals. For each transit...

In Hidden Depths, Professor Penny Spikins explores how our emotional connections have shaped human ancestry. Focusing on three key transitions in human origins, Professor Spikins explains how the emotional capacities of our early ancestors evolved in response to ecological changes, much like similar changes in other social mammals. For each transit...

In Hidden Depths, Professor Penny Spikins explores how our emotional connections have shaped human ancestry. Focusing on three key transitions in human origins, Professor Spikins explains how the emotional capacities of our early ancestors evolved in response to ecological changes, much like similar changes in other social mammals. For each transit...

In Hidden Depths, Professor Penny Spikins explores how our emotional connections have shaped human ancestry. Focusing on three key transitions in human origins, Professor Spikins explains how the emotional capacities of our early ancestors evolved in response to ecological changes, much like similar changes in other social mammals. For each transit...

Epilogue on the Roots of Gratitude

Autism spectrum conditions are widely characterised as a cognitive difference which affects social understanding and behaviour. However, evidence increasingly suggests that the condition also affects engagement with material aspects of the environment. Here we review research into how autism affects engagement with the material world. We argue that...

Archaeological evidence suggests that important shifts were taking place in the character of human social behaviours 300,000 to 30,000 years ago. New artefact types appear and are disseminated with greater frequency. Transfers of both raw materials and finished artefacts take place over increasing distances, implying larger scales of regional mobil...

Homo sapiens is the only species alive able to take advantage of its cognitive abilities to inhabit almost all environments on Earth. Humans are able to culturally construct, rather than biologically inherit, their occupied climatic niche to a degree unparalleled within the animal kingdom. Precisely, when hominins acquired such an ability remains u...

In a special issue that focuses on complex presentations related to Autism, we ask the question in this editorial whether an Autism Spectrum Condition without complexity is a disorder, or whether it represents human diversity? Much research into Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASCs) over the years has focused on comparisons between neuro-typical people...

We rely constantly on self-control in every aspect of our lives. Although it is not an ability unique to humans, our elevated levels of self-control may have played a key role in our evolution. Self-control is likely to have been key to many of the traits such as prosociality, that define modern humans. Despite this, attempts to study the evolution...

This chapter argues that in order to fully understand the significance of sharing in the far distant past we need to make the connection between sharing that we see as an intimate social relationship in modern hunter-gatherers and sharing as seen in archaeological evidence as an economic system with long term ‘pay offs’. Linking these two aspects o...

Values have long provided essential foundation for cultural heritage policy and practice. Traditionally these values were determined by heritage experts and employed by agencies responsible for managing and protecting heritage for society and the future. Such values tended to focus on authorised and normative views of the past. More recently, herit...

This research provides a large scale analysis of evidence previously only available as individual reports which is of significance to an understanding of social changes in the Palaeolithic. It also highlights why healthcare provisioning should be considered as a key evolutionary adaptation and so is of interest and importance to those studying cogn...

Evidence of care for the ill and injured amongst Neanderthals, inferred through skeletal evidence for survival from severe illness and injury, is widely accepted. However, healthcare practices have been viewed primarily as an example of complex cultural behaviour, often discussed alongside symbolism or mortuary practices. Here we argue that care fo...

Our capacity to care about the wellbeing of others, whether they are close family or strangers, can appear to be unimportant in today's competitive societies. However, in this volume Penny Spikins argues that compassion lies at the heart of what makes us human. She takes us on a journey from the earliest stone age societies two million years ago to...

Chapter Three: Large scale landscape distributions

Traits in Upper Palaeolithic art which are also seen in the work of talented artists with autism, including an exceptional realism, remain to be explained. Debate over explanations has been heated, ranging from such art having been created by individuals with autism spectrum conditions, to being influenced by such individuals, to being a product of...

Uniquely, with respect to Middle Pleistocene hominins, anatomically modern humans do not possess marked browridges, and have a more vertical forehead with mobile eyebrows that play a key role in social signalling and communication. The presence and variability of browridges in archaic Homo species and their absence in ourselves have led to debate c...

Explanations for patterns of healed trauma in Neanderthals have been a matter of debate for several decades. Despite widespread evidence for recovery from injuries or survival despite impairments, apparent evidence for healthcare is given limited attention. Moreover, interpretations of Neanderthal’s approach to injury and suffering sometimes assume...

Archaeological research into how objects affect us emotionally is still in its infancy, with our affiliative responses to objects - those related to socially close and harmonious relationships - being particularly understudied. Psychological research has however revealed that objects can have powerful effects on emotional wellbeing, acting as attac...

Although autism has been characterized as a disorder, certain selective advantages of autism have been identified that may represent a selective trade-off for reduced "folk psychology" and provide a potential explanation for the incorporation of autism genes in the human evolutionary past. Such potential trade-off skills remain to be explored in te...

Were individuals with autism influential thousands of years ago? In this ebook we ask what technological and innovative skills, moral qualities and other contributions autism might have brought to human societies, and consider the archaeological and anthropological evidence for the influence of autism in prehistoric art and artefacts. In light of...

Selection pressures to better understand others’ thoughts and feelings are seen as a primary driving force in human cognitive evolution. Yet might the evolution of social cognition be more complex than we assume, with more than one strategy towards social understanding and developing a positive pro-social reputation? Here we argue that social buffe...

https://roundedglobe.com/books/9673edbf-0ba5-47b1-97bd-16ef244fd148/The%20Prehistory%20of%20Autism/

Europe in the Middle Palaeolithic would have been an unfamiliar world. The landscapes which we reconstruct for this period seem almost alien - often shrouded in ice, occupied by extinct fauna, such as mammoths and woolly rhinoceros, and moreover by people seen by many as ‘not quite human’. Unlike in later periods such as the Mesolithic (see Warren...

Gross Daniel M. . The Secret History of Emotion: From Aristotle's Rhetoric to Modern Brain Science. x+194 pages, 1 figure. 2006. Chicago (IL): The University of Chicago Press; 0-226-30979-7 hardback $35 & £22.50. - Volume 80 Issue 310 - Penny Spikins

The explanations for a rapid dispersal of modern humans after 100,000 BP remain enigmatic. Populations of modern humans took new routes – crossing significant topographic and environmental barriers, including making major sea crossings, and moving into and through risky and difficult environments. Neither population increase nor ecological changes...

Is autism part of what makes us ‘human’ today? Autism has traditionally been seen as a condition of people somehow outside society. However recent research has challenged this view, suggesting in contrast that autism is part of the processes that allow societies work together. In the light of the potential value of autistic insight and action in ce...

There has been intense debate over the ‘meaning’ of Lower Palaeolithic handaxe form. Handaxes date from about 1.7 million years onwards, and many show attention to elements of form such as symmetry and a conformity to the ‘golden ratio’ which go beyond immediate function. Our challenge in interpreting such patterning is that we cannot assume a ‘mod...

Over the past ten years new theoretical approaches have changed many of our interpretations of Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sites. New insights have been cast on the potentially symbolic and social use of food and feasting (MIRACLE P. 2002; MILNER N. 2006), the social context of settlement patterns (SPIKINS P. 2000; CONNELLER C. 2005) and the...

Different cultural and research traditions have led to distinctively different approaches to lithics analysis. An integration of different approaches can often give new 'ways of seeing' artefact assemblages and distribution patterns and provide valuable insights into past activities. Here we present the preliminary results of a project integrating...

It is proposed here that the archaeological evidence for the emergence of ‘modern behaviour’ (160,000–40,000 bp) can best be explained as the rise of cognitive variation within populations through social mechanisms for integrating ‘different minds’, rather than by the development of a single ‘modern human mind’. Autism and the autistic spectrum wit...

The creation and maintenance of influential leaders and authorities is one of the key themes of archaeological and historical enquiry. However, the social dynamics of authorities and leaders in the Mesolithic remains a largely unexplored area of study. The role and influence of authorities can vary remarkably in different situations, yet they exist...

The creation and maintenance of influential leaders and authorities is one of the key themes of archaeological and historical enquiry. However the social dynamics of authorities and leaders in the Mesolithic remains a largely unexplored area of study. The role and influence of authorities can be remarkably different in different situations yet they...

[First Paragraph] Mesolithic Europe holds a special place in our imagination. Perhaps more than any other region and period, it is unique in conjuring up a strange sense of both 'otherness' and familiarity. The people who lived here were in many ways fundamentally different from ourselves. As hunters and gatherers, their experience, worldview, and...

Flemming N.C. (ed.). Submarine Prehistoric Archaeology of the North Sea: research priorities and collaboration with industry (CBA Research Report 141). 2004. York: Council for British Archaeology; 1-902771-46-X paperback £25 & £3 p&p. - Volume 79 Issue 305 - Penny Spikins

Focusing on evidence from northern England, this book addresses the idea of gradual population increase and related concepts of Mesolithic settlements. Critically assessed are both the nature of the archaeological and environmental evidence for Mesolithic adaptations. A possible different approach is suggested, which acknowledges the importance of...

Traditionally sites occupied by mobile groups, without clearly identifiable contexts or phases, have been excavated according to arbitrarily defined vertical spits. The disadvantages of this approach are obvious—where occupation occurred on an undulating or sloped surface, stratigraphic levels or activity horizons, if they existed, are often unlike...

Mesolithic sites have been recovered from eroding moorlands in the Pennines for well over a century. However this volume presents the results of the first detailed high resolution excavations of a series of these sites in Marsden moor. 'Snapshots' of activities at these sites from the Early, Late and Latest Mesolithic are explained, and situated wi...

Archaeological interpretations of past societies, particularly those of past hunter-gatherer groups, have traditionally drawn heavily on evidence for past environments and environmental changes. Ironically however our understanding of these environments is typically far from ideal, particularly at the scale most relevant to broad settlement pattern...