Phone:

(023) 8059 9408

Email:

S.W.G.Davies@soton.ac.uk

Professor William Davies 

Professor

William Davies is a Professor of Palaeoanthropology at the University of Southampton.

I joined Archaeology as a research fellow in 2001, working on the S2AGES project (2001-2004) with Prof. Clive Gamble, and became a Lecturer in September 2006.  I became Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor in 2013, and Professor in 2020.  Since 1992, my research has focussed on mobility/dispersal, interaction and innovation in Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers, particularly in late Neanderthals and in early Homo sapiens.  I was a founder member of the Stage 3 Project (1996-2001), which aimed to set the extinction of Neanderthals and the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe into a broad and coherent ecological and climatic framework. Between 2004 and 2009, I was closely involved with two NERC-funded projects to obtain new, more reliable radiocarbon dates for diagnostic artefacts in eastern and western Europe (50-20 thousand years ago).  I was involved in the NERC-funded RESET consortium (2008-2013), which used microscopic volcanic ash layers to provide a chronological framework for Neanderthal and early Homo sapiens sites in Europe, the Levant and North Africa.  Between 2013 and 2016 I ran a 3-year, Leverhulme Trust funded, DEPICT project to explore innovations and manufacturing techniques in the c.10,000 ceramic figurines known from Eurasia and North Africa between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, using the expertise of Dr Rebecca Farbstein.  Since 2019, I have been involved with a British Academy Newton Fellowship (Dr Aitor Ruiz Redondo) exploring and analysing the presence of cave art in the Balkans and eastern Europe (PALAEOART EAST Project).

I am a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and sat on the NERC National Radiocarbon Facility steering committee between 2013 and 2019.  I am currently Director of Programmes for Archaeology.

I am a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and sit on the NERC Radiocarbon facility steering committee.