Dr James Walker has joined Lost Frontiers as Mesolithic/Neolithic Research Assistant

James has wide interests in hunter-gatherer archaeology and anthropology—in particular the period between the Palaeolithic and the early Neolithic. Within this area, his research spans a broad variety of periods, places and topics, but the Mesolithic of northwest Europe, and particularly the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition and the nature of coastal and maritime adaptations, have been core research interests of his since his days as an undergraduate.

Prior to joining the Europe’s Lost Frontiers project, he worked as part of the editorial team for the journal Antiquity, and lectured and taught on various evolutionary anthropology modules for the Department of Anthropology at Durham University. He was awarded his AHRC funded PhD on microlithic hunting by Durham University in 2015, having completed an MPhil at the University of Cambridge in 2009 on seasonal mobility in the Mesolithic, for which he won the AEA John Evans Dissertation Prize. In addition to the intercontinental scope of his academic research, James also has field experience in both Europe and North America, giving him a uniquely broad-scale perspective of trends in hunter-gatherer archaeology when it comes to matters such as adaptation, variability, mobility and migration, subsistence, technology, environment, evolution and societal interactions. As such, his role in the ELF team will be to integrate contemporary archaeological research into computer simulations of past populations of Doggerland, and to provide reflection on what life would have been like for the people who once inhabited this dynamic landscape before its disappearance, and how best to engage with the public on this subject.

Location

North Sea