Dr Rob Hosfield

Biography

Rob teaches the Palaeolithic archaeology of Europe, global human origins, lithics, GIS and statistics for archaeologists. Rob is currently leading, with Dr James Cole (Brighton University), an AHRC Network project: Coping with climate: the legacy of H. heidelbergensis. Rob has recently completed a site monograph on the British Lower Palaeolithic site of Broom (Hosfield & Green 2013) and an edited volume in honour of Prof. Clive Gamble (Coward et al. 2015), and is currently working on a new book exploring the European early Palaeolithic from the perspective of a 'year in the life'. Rob has recently published papers on the Palaeolithic and Holocene archaeology of the Wadi Muqadam region in Sudan, and is currently working on new papers exploring global patterns in Palaeolithic technology, the evolution of human attentiveness, and the challenges of Palaeolithic survival in mid-latitudes. Rob’s recent fieldwork has been both at home (at the British Lower Palaeolithic site of Knowle Farm) and abroad: Easter 2013 saw him undertaking a Palaeolithic archaeology and landscape survey in Sudan (with Dr Kevin White and Prof. Nick Drake of King’s College London). He has also published papers on the early Middle Pleistocene archaeology of Britain, the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic archaeology of the Solent (with Dr Nick Ashton of the British Museum), British Palaeolithic settlement histories (with Dr Ashton and Dr Simon Lewis, Queen Mary’s, University of London), the handaxe assemblage from the British Lower Palaeolithic site of Broom (with Dr Jenni Chambers), antiquarians and the Palaeolithic record, social learning and craft skills, and the interpretation of Palaeolithic assemblages from fluvial contexts. He has been a Committee Member of the Lithic Studies Society , and has served as a council member of the Prehistoric Society (2005-2008). Rob was involved with the South West Archaeological Research Framework (SWARF), acting as the period convenor for the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic, and has also contributed to the Solent-Thames Archaeological Research Framework (the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic archaeology of Berkshire; Wenban-Smith et al. 2014) and the Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes Terrestrial Minerals Resource Assessment.

Research Interest

British and Western European Lower and Middle Palaeolithic archaeology Pleistocene fluvial landscapes Experimental archaeology & site formation processes GIS applications in Palaeolithic and prehistoric archaeology