Prospectus

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MA internship Palaeolithic Archaeology

Course
2013-2014

Internships usually consist of participation in fieldwork (co-)organised by the Human Origins group or its collaboration partners, or entail participation in running laboratory studies by staff members.

Existing fieldwork projects include:

  • Dr. Marie Soressi’s excavations at Les Cottés (Vienne, France), one of the rare sites which contains a sequence of Evolved Chatelperronian, proto-Aurignacian and Early Aurignacian. The goal of the excavations is to better understand the behaviour of the last Neanderthals and the first anatomically modern humans in Western Europe.

  • Dr. Alexander Verpoorte participates in the fieldwork at the Aurignacian site of Breitenbach (Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany), in collaboration with colleagues from the Monrepos Research Centre. The large-scale excavations at this open air site afford a unique chance to study the spatial organisation of early Upper Palaeolithic humans.

  • Dr. Mike Field is currently starting a fieldwork project at the Lower Palaeolithic site complex of Barnham, Suffolk, a flagship site of the British Palaeolithic. His fieldwork, in collaboration with colleagues from the British Museum and the Museum of Natural History in London, will have a strong emphasis on the environmental setting of the Acheulean and Clactonian assemblages there.

  • Examples of recent laboratory internships include assisting staff members in lithic studies of Palaeolithic assemblages such as Neumark Nord 2 (c. 125.000 years old), lab work for isotope studies of fish remains from the Early Pleistocene lake Turkana sequence (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and studies of faunal remains from hominin sites in Java (at the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre, Leiden).