CAHO Seminar Series 2023-2024 Programme
Autumn Term
The CAHO Seminar Series welcomes you to the first instalment of talks for the 2023-2024 academic year. Check out the posters below for further details. If you are interested in joining us for the CAHO Seminar Series each week, please use the following Microsoft Teams meeting link: Click here to join the meeting.
The CAHO Seminar Series is open to anyone who is interested in Human Origins and Palaeolithic/Mesolithic research, whether you are an undergraduate or a professor, so please feel free to tune in online or come in person! Follow us on twitter for more updates: @CAHO_uk.
26th October 2023
Dr Robert Davis (Project Curator for the Pathways to Ancient Britain project, British Museum)
Title: New fieldwork at Barnham, Beeches Pit and Devereux’s Pit: material culture and fire-use at c. 400 ka.
Abstract: Britain has an exceptional archaeological and environmental record for the Hoxnian interglacial (MIS 11c; c. 400 ka). A series of sites with archaeological assemblages associated with faunal and floral records provide detail of human habitat and behaviour, as well as a means of developing a chronological framework of demographic and technological change c. 400 ka. In this talk, new work at three of these sites will be discussed. Ongoing fieldwork at Barnham has strengthened evidence for two distinct phases of occupation during the Hoxnian, first by groups that employed a core and flake lithic technology (Clactonian), followed by groups with handaxes (Acheulean). There is abundant evidence for fire at the site, and current research is addressing the nature of the past burning events, and their relationship to the lithic assemblages. At Beeches Pit, evidence for fire is also found throughout the sequence, yet sediments from the first half of the interglacial have never been excavated archaeologically. New work is targeting this part of the sequence to provide an archaeological context for the earliest evidence of fire-use at the site. Devereux’s Pit is a new site, with preliminary results indicating the presence of two distinct assemblages, associated with burnt materials and faunal remains. The ongoing work at these three neighbouring sites aims to better understand the development of fire-use among human populations in northwest Europe at c. 400 ka.
9th November 2023
Emily Watt (Natural History Museum)
Title: TBC
Abstract: TBC
21st November 2023
Prof Mark White (Durham University)
Title: TBC
Abstract: TBC
7th December 2023
Dr Andreas Nymark (Harvard University)
Title: TBC
Abstract: TBC