Teaching

I teach Palaeolithic archaeology, lithic technology, experimental approaches to prehistoric technology, and 3D-based methods in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Southampton (UK). My modules run across all undergraduate years and at MA level, and combine lectures with hands-on work on archaeological and experimental assemblages.


Current teaching — University of Southampton

ARCH6411 — The Analysis of Palaeolithic Stone Tool Assemblages

MA (Level 7) · Semester 1 · 15 CATS / 7.5 ECTS · Module lead

A practical, assemblage-based module on how archaeologists read stone tools and turn them into behavioural interpretations. Sessions move through flakes and flake tools, cores and core reduction, handaxes, prepared-core (Levallois) technology, and blade technologies, working directly with archaeological and experimental material. Students build their own recording protocols and learn to characterise an assemblage and defend an interpretation — the training gap between recognising artefacts and confidently analysing your own data at research level.

→ Module details


ARCH2039 — Experimental Archaeology: the Social Prehistory of Technology

BA (Level 5) · Semester 1 · 15 CATS / 7.5 ECTS · Module lead

Prehistoric technologies approached by rebuilding them. The module covers the main raw materials of prehistory — knapped and ground stone, bone and antler, wood, fibres and textiles, ceramics, metals — and asks how and why objects in these materials were made, and what social, economic and symbolic work they did. Students design and run their own experimental project across dedicated extended workshop sessions, then analyse and communicate their results, comparing experimental patterns with archaeological assemblages and the ethnographic record.

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ARCH2004 — Introduction to European Prehistory

BA (Level 5) · Semester 2 · 15 CATS / 7.5 ECTS · Module lead

The ten millennia between the end of the last glacial and the rise of Rome, told through the themes that structure them: post-glacial hunter-gatherer worlds, the spread of farming, monumental architecture and settlement, the consequences of metallurgy, and the long-distance networks that tied Europe together. The module pairs thematic lectures with an individual project, and introduces students to the interpretive debates behind reconstructions of prehistoric lifeways.

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ARCH1001 — Human Origins

BA (Level 4) · Semester 2 · 15 CATS / 7.5 ECTS · Taught with Dr Rachel Bynoe

An introduction to the evolution of hominin biology and culture, and to how ideas about our earliest ancestors have shifted over time. The module follows the emergence of technology, language, art and social behaviour, and introduces students to the nature of the Palaeolithic record itself — how sites form, and what that means for the interpretations we can build on them.

→ Module details


Supervision

I supervise undergraduate, MA, and PhD projects on Late Pleistocene archaeology, quantitative and 3D-based lithic analysis, experimental archaeology, and open science in archaeology. I also mentor early-career researchers preparing Marie Skłodowska-Curie proposals and comparable fellowship applications.

→ Supervision and prospective students


Past teaching — University of Tübingen

From my time at the Institute for Archaeological Sciences (University of Tübingen, Germany), where I taught in the MSc programme Archaeological Sciences and Human Evolution.

Prehistory of Mediterranean Europe: Late Neanderthals and Modern Humans

A seminar on the archaeology of Mediterranean Europe from the late Middle Palaeolithic to the early Upper Palaeolithic. Students read, presented, and critically discussed recent research papers spanning lithic technology, geoarchaeology, radiocarbon dating, and zooarchaeology.

3D Applications in Lithic Analysis

An introduction to scanning technologies for documenting stone tools and other archaeological artifacts, from digitisation with 3D scanners (Artec Spider, Artec Micro) and photogrammetry through to analysis. 3D meshes served as case studies for open-source tools including Meshlab, CloudCompare, Artifact3-D, AGMT3-D, and RStudio, with an emphasis on 3D geometric morphometrics, data visualisation, and open science practices.

Stone Age Technology

A co-taught lecture series offering an in-depth overview of research in Stone Age technology, introducing the methods and theories behind the analysis of botanical, osseous, and lithic artifacts from a diachronic perspective.