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Centre for Applied Human Origins Research

Clive Gamble interviewed by Matt Pope on BBC Radio Four

Clive Gamble was interviewed by Matt Pope for the BBC Radio Four "History of Ideas". Matt is a member of the AHRC Project: Crossing the Threshold: Dynamic transformation in human societies of the Late Middle Pleistocene project. The audio is available on the BBC Radio Four website. It was broadcast on Friday 30 Jan 2015. Clive's section begins at around 2 minutes 40s in, where he talks about the evolutionary trade off between larger brains and smaller intestines. Continue reading →

Postcard from France

  This year's C.A.H.O. Palaeolithic field trip to France, with the Captain William S. Davies (C.A.H.O.'s new director!!) at the helm. Today was our first full day in France. We caught the boat from Portsmouth yesterday for a mid-afternoon sailing and were in Caen by late evening. An early start (ish) saw us on the road heading southwards for north central France. Continue reading →

Baker’s Hole Palaeolithic site: new work

I'm happy to report an award of a grant from English Heritage to conduct a field survey of this important Palaeolithic site. I will be leading the project, which follows from a preliminary survey supported by Natural England which established that the site was currently in poor condition, leading to it being placed on the national register of Monuments at Risk. The site is unusual in being statutorily protected both as a Scheduled Ancient Monument and a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Continue reading →

The Evolutionary Uses of Imagination

I have just published a post on fifteeneightyfour, the blog of Cambridge University Press. Here is a taster. You can read the remainder via the link at the bottom. Why are we so imaginative? What possible use is there in passing through the looking-glass with Alice or supposing that the moon is inhabited by creatures with aerials growing out of their heads? These are some of the wilder flights of our imagination and not shared by everyone. Continue reading →

The death of prehistory

I know this will upset many archaeologists but let’s admit it, prehistory is dead. Adding a pre- to history no longer makes any sense. Pre-history rightly belongs to the Jurassic’s dinosaurs and the wriggling worms of the Cambrian explosion; those shaley superstars Opabinia and Wiwaxia that Stephen Jay Gould trumpeted so loudly in Wonderful Life. Human prehistory deserves better than being lumped with big lizards and creatures with less neurons than an Arctic midge. Continue reading →