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Staff Profiles

Professor Chantal Conneller

Professor of Early Prehistory

Background

I grew up in London and did my BA and PhD at the University of Cambridge. I held a research fellowship at Queens' College, Cambridge between 2001 and 2004. I have also worked at various periods for the Cambridge Archaeology Unit. In 2005 I was lecturer in Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Wales, Bangor. Between 2005 and 2017 I was lecturer then senior lecturer in Early Prehistory at the University of Manchester. I joined Newcastle in 2018.

I am particularly interested in the following areas:

  • The Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic of north-west Europe.
  • Technology and materials
  • Lithic studies
  • Settlement and environmental change
  • Human-animal relations
 
Research

I specialise in the European Mesolithic, with interests ranging from technology and materials, human-animal relations, mortuary practices, radiocarbon dating of Mesolithic settlement and human responses to sea-level rise. My doctoral work focused on understanding Mesolithic technologies in the landscape of the Vale of Pickering. My current research has two main foci: The first explores theoretical approaches to technology and materials, which has produced a book An Archaeology of Materials (Routledge 2011); the second focuses on Mesolithic settlement and landscape inhabitation, and as part of this I am working on a book, The Mesolithic of Britain (Routledge).


I have excavated on various sites in the Vale of Pickering, and between 2004 and 2015 directed excavations at Star Carr. Between 2010 and 2023 I was a director of the Ice Age Island Project, which is responsible for survey and excavation of a number of Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic sites on Jersey. I am currently co-directing excavations at the Mesolithic-Neolithic site of Cherhill, Wiltshire.

 

Publications