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The University of Southampton
Humanities

Dr James Cole 

Visiting Fellow

Dr James Cole's photo

Dr James Cole is a Visiting Fellow in Archaeology at the University of Southampton.

I read for my BA at the University of Southampton where I was interested in Human Origins and Maritime Archaeology. After my BA I went on to do an MA (Part-time)  in Human Origins at Southampton and joined CAHO as a Postgraduate student in 2004. Having graduated from my MA I spent eight months working in commercial archaeology with the Field-Unit of UCL (Archaeology South-East), before starting my Ph.D research back at Southampton under a full studentship grant from the British Academy Centenary Project "Lucy to Language: the archaeology of the Social Brain."

Since successfully defending my Ph.D in August 2011 I have taught a number of Human Origins modules based at Southampton, Bournemouth, Reading, Royal Holloway and Oxford Universities. I also am heavily engaged in fieldwork, running and co-directing projects most recently in Britain specifically mapping the archaeology of Hengistbury Head with Dr William Davies, Lesvos with Greek colleagues from the University of Crete and Dr John McNabb and Albania with Dr Dustin White and other colleagues from Edinburgh and Albania.

Research interests

My primary research interests concern hominin cognition and the use of material culture within hominin social signalling during the Pleistocene. The nature of this research into the Palaeolithic also has resonance in understanding the development of language and the role such a behavioural adaptation plays in the evolution of our own species. In addition I am interested in hominin dispersals within and without Africa in particular contextualising the Lower Palaeolithic dispersals into Europe. This element to my research is heavily fieldwork based and as such I am engaged in wide range of fieldwork projects across Europe. As well as being an experienced excavator I am also interested in bringing a range of Archaeological surveying techniques (topographic and geophysical) to contextualise hominin behaviour within the  broader site and regional landscapes. This includes 3D topographic reconstructions that make use of geophysics to inform on the sub-surface geology.

Research group

Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins

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External Article

Hamilakis, Yannis and Kyparissi-Apostolika, Nina (2012) Koutroulou Magoula in central Greece: from the neolithic to the present. Antiquity, 86, (333)

Not teaching in 2012-13

Dr James Cole
Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Southampton, Avenue Campus, Southampton. SO17 1BF United Kingdom
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