Rebecca M. Wragg Sykes

• MA Archaeology of Human Origins; PhD Palaeolithic
• Fellow at University of Liverpool

This volume provides a landscape narrative of early hominin evolution, linking conventional material and geographic aspects of the early archaeological record with wider and more elusive social, cognitive and symbolic landscapes. It seeks to move beyond a limiting notion of early hominin culture and behaviour as dictated solely by the environment t...

Kindred is the definitive guide to the Neanderthals. Since their discovery over 160 years ago, they've metamorphosed from the losers of the human family tree to A-list hominins. While 21st century scientific understanding of Neanderthals is complex and fascinating, much remains inaccessible outside the specialist literature. In Kindred, Rebecca Wr...

Despite a remarkably persistent pop culture image of Neanderthals as semi-upright, hairy, cavemen wielding clubs, science provides us with a different picture. There is no doubt that the evolutionary forces that shaped Neanderthals and Homo sapiens differed, but recent evidence of interbreeding tells us that our anatomy and physiology were compatib...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

In this chapter, we will consider how women have worked in archaeology, largely in Anglophone contexts; the methods and means by which they could achieve significant contributions and careers despite considerable obstacles to their participation solely based on their sex. We will examine how the interactions between individuals work to build networ...

Our closest cousins died out some 40,000 years ago, but we can get a glimpse of their thoughts from the objects they left behind, archaeologist Rebecca Wragg Sykes tells Colin Barras

This chapter presents the first collective synthesis of Late Middle Palaeolithic lithic technology (MIS 4–3, ≈ 70-40 ka) from the Altai mountains to the Atlantic coast of Western Europe and the Mediterranean regions of Europe and the Levant. As early as the first half of the twentieth century, archaeological debates focused on characterising and in...

(Article in digital magazine Aeon) Handprints on a cave wall, crumbs from a meal: the new science of Neanderthals radically recasts the meaning of humanity

The archaeological record of the later Middle Palaeolithic in Britain presents a very different character to that found in France: numerically far smaller, with a more ephemeral character. This, together with a challenging history in terms of collection bias resulting from early excavations, has created an impression that it cannot contribute to br...

Petro-archaeology is a powerful tool useful in understanding the origin and management of rocks discovered in prehistoric sites and the complexity of human territories. This research technique has been applied extensively to the Massif Central and its margins, allowing the revaluation of lithic imports from the Rhodanian corridor. Flint derived fro...

The TrowelBlazers project provides an example of how public participation can radically influence an archival heritage project. Conceived as a Tumblr site where a limited group could post content celebrating female archaeologists, geologists, and palaeontologists, we soon allowed ‘guest’ posts, which rapidly broadened the scope of our project. Thro...

Petro-archaeology is a powerful tool useful in understanding the origin and management of rocks discovered in prehistoric sites and the complexity of human territories. This research technique has been applied extensively to the Massif Central and its margins, allowing the revaluation of lithic imports from the Rhodanian corridor. Flint derived fro...

Silcretes are not widely discussed archaeologically as a prehistoric lithic resource in Europe, despite there being many years of geological research into their formation, and in some regions, a long record of their use in prehistory. In the Massif Central, south eastern France, various silcrete sources represent some of the largest and best qualit...

Despite its long research history and particular palaeogeographic context, the British Late Middle Palaeolithic (LMP) of Marine Isotope Stage 4 and 3 has not been fully integrated in broader discussions of Neanderthal behavioural adaptations. This is due not only to the lack of a comprehensive account of the archaeological record, but also to perce...

En 2015, les résultats scientifiques obtenus débouchent sur une amélioration significative aux niveaux gîtologique, pétroarchéologique et archéologique. Nous sommes en mesure de présenter une carte précise des formations à silex et une ébauche d’atlas comprenant les principaux types de silex présents en Auvergne. Avec la constitution d’un protocole...

Recent broad-scale comparative studies of Neanderthal lithic assemblages have contrasted previous views of the Middle Palaeolithic as a period of stasis. Throughout the Middle Palaeolithic, ca. 300,000-35,000 years ago, typo-technological changes can be observed in the Neanderthal behavioural repertoire, including trends that are restricted in time...

The study of siliceous raw materials in the European Palaeolithic has frequently focused on flint and chert (more broadly, silex) as the materials most often encountered in archaeological sites. This poster provides new data on the use of silcrete, a lithic material that is little known in the European Palaeolithic (although familiar in Australian,...

Palaeolithic exploitation of lithic sources is still often considered from a site - centred perspective: ‘living’ sites are represented as centres of resource consumption, with stone entering them centripetally. The reality of how stone tool sources tted into webs of resource use and human movements is likely to be more complex and it is essential...

Au cours du mois d’août 2014, une campagne de sondage a été réalisée sur la commune de Saint-Pierre-Eynac (SPE). Cette opération était motivée par la découverte en 1972 par R. de Bayle des Hermens d’une série d’artefacts lithiques préhistoriques dans le champ de Mr Marcon (parcelle B830), par la mise en évidence en 2013 de multiples objets taillés...

Ce PCR regroupait en première année de fonctionnement 47 chercheurs professionnels et bénévoles, plusieurs collaborateurs occssionnels et un prestataire privé pour analyses spécialisées, autour de la thématique « espaces et subsistances » dans le sud-est du Massif central, entre moyenne montagne et couloir rhodanien. Les travaux conduits s’appuient...

Our view of Neanderthals as a species has been transformed over the last decade following important archaeological discoveries, and advances in palaeogenetics. New evidence from varied elements of the Late Middle Palaeolithic (lithic raw material transport and symbolic artefacts/practices) compel reconsideration of other aspects of material culture...

This paper presents a summary of the first season of fieldwork and archive assessment undertaken in 2010 as part of the of Jersey, through targeted sampling and key-hole excavation of poorly understood find spots, as well as a major reassessment of La Cotte de St Brelade. This paper presents the successful results of two weeks of intensive fieldwor...

Selected results from a recent comprehensive, technologically-centred study of the British Late Middle Palaeolithic are presented. Bifaces are a major element of these MIS 3 Mousterian assemblages, but they have not been examined in an inclusive manner. Attention has until now been focused on particular strikingly-shaped examples termed bout coupés...

Neanderthals were absent from Britain for a large part of the Middle and Upper Pleistocene, and returned after Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 4 when the climate ameliorated. Their presence in Britain has been established by early MIS 3, at least 55- 60,000 years BP, until around 40,000 BP. Our understanding of this reoccupation of the British landscape...