Dr James Cole

The lost languages of ancient humans: Listen to stone-age chat The fossilised bones of our ancestors remain silent. So, how can we possibly imagine what our earliest languages sounded like?

I was interviewed for an interesting BBC Futures article recently on hominid cognition and language development - check it out if you are interested: www.bbc.co.uk/future/artic...

We are delighted to announce that the keynote speech at the upcoming Lessons From the Past conference (23rd - 24th March 2026), will be a free and publicly accessible talk!

A painting of a Roman masonry walled fort with projecting towers from the air, reused as a base by Norman soldiers arriving in dragon boats from the sea

28th September 1066

An invading army led by William Duke of Normandy make the 780 year old #Roman fort of ANDERITVM (Pevensey) #Sussex a base prior to the Battle of Hastings

A vivid recreation © Alan Sorrell 1970 reproduced in 1976 as a Department of the Environment postcard

#RomanFortThursday

Come and join us. It's such a great place to work.

New #jobs at @uni-kiel.de within the @clusterroots.bsky.social advertised: one doctoral & two postdoctoral positions. The postdoc positions are for any projects relating to archaeological science and are explicitely looking for for applicants from Africa and Asia: www.uni-kiel.de/en/cluster-r...

A screen grab of a double magazine spread with palaeoart of Denisovans hunting in a forest and the headline "Invisible humans".

I wrote quite a fun piece for the @nhm-london.bsky.social's members magazine with @chrisbstringer.bsky.social about what we currently know (and don't!) about Denisovans 💀

I'm really looking forward to talking to Eastbourne Natural History and Archaeological Society this Friday. I'll be talking about the Ice Age records of the Cuckmere Valley, Hope Gap, Birling Gap and the Downlands between Eastbourne and Lewes. Expect Mammoth. 🏺🦣https://www.eastbournearchaeology.com/

Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi Nature - A hand stencil painted on a cave wall on a small island off the coast of Sulawesi more than 67,800 years ago suggests a very early occupation of Wallacea.

Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi rdcu.be/e470j

Hi All,

Please join us next Thursday, 26th February at 13:00 GMT, for our next talk of the semester! This talk will be given by Dr Rosa Huguet.

If you would like to attend, please register here: events.teams.microsoft.com/event/3195e0...

More details below 👇

We hope to see you there!

Homo heidelbergensis and The Origins of The Middle Stone Age: The Kabwe (Broken Hill) Lithic Assemblage - African Archaeological Review The Middle Stone Age (MSA) saw the emergence of novel behaviours in the archaeological record and is generally associated with our own species, Homo sapiens. Yet, most archaeological assemblages conta...

Homo heidelbergensis and The Origins of The Middle Stone Age: The Kabwe (Broken Hill) Lithic Assemblage link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The oldest in situ Homo erectus crania in eastern Asia: The Yunxian site dates to ~1.77 Ma Isochron 26Al/10Be burial dates at 1.77 Ma make Yunxian the oldest in situ–discovered Homo erectus fossil site in eastern Asia.

The oldest in situ Homo erectus crania in eastern Asia: The Yunxian site dates to ~1.77 Ma | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

HERI Co-Directors Rebecca Ackermann and Robyn Pickering invite contributions to the symposium “New Directions in Palaeoanthropological Research in Southern Africa” at IPC7.
To submit an abstract, please email the convenors.
Details and information on all 29 symposia are available at: www.ipc7.site

Job alert in Malta on my ERC funded IslandLab Project for a post excavation research assistant. A bachalor's degree in Archaeology, or related fields is required, ideally with experience working on faunal assemblages and handling bones/fossils, and curating finds.
www.um.edu.mt/media/um/doc...

I love how accurate the reconstruction is: she is carving a small alder trunk, in the right direction on the basis of the toolmarks we documented on the tool, with the landscape, palaeolake and fauna in the background all rooted in the evidence from Marathousa 1. Thank you Katerina & Gleiver!👏

Evidence for the earliest hominin use of wooden handheld tools found at Marathousa 1 (Greece) | PNAS The Middle Pleistocene (MP; ca. 774 to 129 ka) marks a critical period of human evolution, characterized by increasing behavioral complexity and th...

It was such a privilege to get to work on this amazing material from an incredible site and team - now the earliest handheld wooden tools in the archaeological record, taking evidence back to 430,000 years! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

International Fellowships 2026 The International Fellowships Programme enables researchers to work for two years at a UK institution with the aim of building a globally connected, mobile research and innovation workforce. Funding status Open for applications Career stage Early-career

Please help spread the word on this, especially to those who may be feeling cold winds towards their research.

We’ve opened the call for our International Fellowships, enabling early career researchers to work for two years at a UK research institution
www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/sche...

YouTube video by New Scientist Where Are the Denisovans? The Answer is in our DNA

New Scientist interview me about Denisovans, Dragon Man and Yunxian youtube.com/watch?v=i3zq...

Direct evidence for poison use on microlithic arrowheads in Southern Africa at 60,000 years ago Earliest proof of plant poisons on arrows reveals complex Pleistocene hunting in southern Africa.

🏺🦣🧪
V nice work: poison-tipped projectile weapons in early H. sapiens S. Africa 60 Ka.
Thoughts:
- tiny lithics framed as *adapted* for poisoning makes me think of Néronian micro-points in France, 54 ka
- focus here is hunting, but potentially useful against humans

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Day 2 of #QRA2026ADM took us into the world of #Quaternary glaciation and Sedimentary Archives from glaciers, tsunamis & Quaternary sediments more generally

#QRA2026ADM is go!

Quaternary scientist on stage in front of a big beautiful slide of mountains and the QRA logo

Good morning, @lornalinch.bsky.social and the rest of us are here in Brighton ready to welcome you to the Quaternary Research Association conference.
Follow the hashtag #QRA2026ADM for Ice Age and recent environments and people. @quaternaryra.bsky.social
🏺🦣❄️

Work with us We are happy to announce that we are now advertising three (3) paid positions at the Tomb of the Eagles for 2026. The positions are a Heritage Manager who will oversee day-to-day running of the site…

Want a heritage job? In beautiful usually-there’s-not-this-much-snow #Orkney?

As part of our community project to reopen the Neolithic Tomb of the Eagles to visitors, we now have three paid positions advertised for 2026.

For more info follow the link. Applications close 5pm, 18 January.

🏺

Characterizing the American Upper Paleolithic Tool similarities link Late Pleistocene American and Northeast Asian lithic traditions.

US-Japan archaeological team argues strong similarities between very earliest US lithic technology and lithic tech from Hokkaido means that isolated groups on Hokkaido may have used boats to hop along Beringia coast to Americas 18-22K yrs ago (no walk across the land bridge at all). (From Oct.)

Homo heidelbergensis and The Origins of The Middle Stone Age: The Kabwe (Broken Hill) Lithic Assemblage - African Archaeological Review The Middle Stone Age (MSA) saw the emergence of novel behaviours in the archaeological record and is generally associated with our own species, Homo sapiens. Yet, most archaeological assemblages conta...

Just published a paper on the lithics from Kabwe. We argue that they're indicative of MSA technology, although they can't be definitevely associated with the fossils. Might help better understand the origins of the MSA and its complex pattern across the continent.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Senior Lecturer/Reader/Professor in Anthropology at SOAS University of London Apply for the Senior Lecturer/Reader/Professor in Anthropology role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.

Lecturer/Reader/Professor in Anthropology
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPU921/s...

Earliest evidence of making fire Nature - Baked sediment, heat-shattered artefacts and introduced pyrite in a 400,000-year-old Palaeolithic occupation site in Suffolk, UK provide evidence of intentional fire-making, marking a...

"Earliest evidence of making fire" - full-text view-only version of the Nature paper, using the link below.
rdcu.be/eT4WI

A view of the ruined castle at Scotney in Kent showing the bridge across to the main castle island, in a snow covered winter setting

NEW Toolkit: working with experts across a number of different institutions & with support from the Royal Historical Society, we're delighted to share this FREE resource for anyone interested in or involved with the conservation & interpretation of ruins.
heyzine.com/flip-book/77...
#ruins 🏰

105,000 years ago, Homo sapiens left their mark at Gamohana Hill North Rockshelter in the Kalahari. They crafted points from galaxy tuff, a 2.4-billion-year-old glass-like stone. Not just a rock, but evidence of skill, planning, and ingenuity.

📖 Read more at
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Highly selective cannibalism in the Late Pleistocene of Northern Europe reveals Neandertals were targeted prey - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Highly selective cannibalism in the Late Pleistocene of Northern Europe reveals Neandertals were targeted prey

Today in #Palaeolunch we considered the evidence for cannibalism of gracile female Neanderthals and children from Goyet cave. Who was eating who? was this hunting, warfare, desperation or ritual? The latest study of the site takes our understanding a lot further. #PaPa 🦣🏺
doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Blinded by the Light (of Modernity): Does the Concept of Modern Human Behavior Obscure Diversity in Hominin Cultural Evolution? - Biological Theory Biological Theory - The remarkably durable construct of “modern human behavior” (MHB) is used by paleoanthropologists to summarize the features of behavior and underlying cognitive...

"Archaeology is anthropology or it is nothing", it was said. Arguably this focus on the ethnographic present is having a strongly negative impact on our understanding of the deep past. Some very useful thoughts on this topic in new paper by Kuhn and Stiner (link.springer.com/article/10.1...)