The University of Sheffield
Department of Archaeology

Dr Paul PettittPaul Pettitt

Reader in Palaeolithic Archaeology

BA(Hons) Ma, PhD (Cantab) FSA

Email address p.pettitt@sheffield.ac.uk

Telephone 0114 2222919

Biography

Dr Pettitt is a specialist in Palaeolithic archaeology. He has degrees from the Universities of Birmingham (BA 1991), London (MA 1992) and Cambridge (PhD 1999).

Following his doctoral research on Neanderthal behaviour at Cambridge he became Ataff Archaeologist (latterly Senior Archaeologist) at the Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, University of Oxford (1995-2001) and was Douglas Price Junior Research Fellow (1997-2000) and Research Fellow and Tutor in Archaeology and Anthropology (2000-2003) at Keble College, Oxford.

He has been at Sheffield since 2003 where he is currently Reader in Palaeolithic Archaeology.

Research interests

Current research projects / collaborations

Research supervision

I supervise research into European Palaeolithic behaviour and society, the British Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, the origins of art and symbolism and mortuary activity in evolutionary perspective.

Teaching

Undergraduate

Postgraduate

Selected publications

Pettitt, P. B. And White, M. J. (in press) The British Palaeolithic. London:Routledge.

Pettitt, P. B., Housley, R. A. and Higham, T. F. G. (in press.) Radiocarbon chronology and faunal turnover in the Upper Pleistocene at Pontnewydd cave. For Aldhouse-Green, S. Walker, E. and Peterson, R. (eds.) Pontnewydd and the Elwy Valley Caves. Cardiff: National Museums and Galleries of Wales.

Pettitt, P. B. (in press) Religion and ritual in the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic. In Insoll, T. and Maclean, R. (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion. Oxford: University press.

Pettitt, P. B. (in press). The living as symbols, the dead as symbols: the scale and pace of symbolism over the course of hominin evolution. In Henshilwood, C. and d’Errico, F. (eds.) Homo symbolicus. Bergen: University of Bergen press.

Pettitt, P.B. (2011) The Palaeolithic Origins of Human Burial. London: Routledge.

White, M. J. and Pettitt, P. B. (2011). Neanderthals in Western Doggerland: towards an interpretative understanding of the Late Middle Palaeolithic Settlement of Britain. Journal of World Prehistory 24, 25-97.

Pettitt, P. B. And White, M. J. (2010). Cave men: stone tools, Victorian science, and the ‘primitive mind’ of deep time. Notes and Records of the Royal Society online December 23.

Bahn, P. and Pettitt, P. B. (2009). Britain’s Oldest Art: The Ice Age Cave Art of Creswell Crags. London: English Heritage.

Pettitt, P. B., Jacobi, R. M., Chamberlain, A., Pike, A. W. G., Schreve, D., Wall, I., Dinnis, R. and Wragg-Sykes, R. (2009). Excavations outside Church Hole, Creswell Crags: the first three seasons (2006-8). Transactions of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire 113, 35-53.

White, M. J. and Pettitt, P. B. (2009). The demonstration of human antiquity: three rediscovered illustrations from the 1825 and 1846 excavations in Kent’s Cavern (Torquay, England). Antiquity 83, 758-68.

Pettitt, P. B. (2009). François Bordes. In Lithics special edition volume 30: Hosfield, R., Wenban-Smith, F. and Pope, M. (eds.) Great Prehistorians: 150 years of Palaeolithic Research, 1859-2009, 201-12.

Zvelebil, M., Pettitt, P. and Lukes, A. (2009) Lives, loves and deaths of Neolithic farmers: bioarchaeology of burials from Vedrovice (Czech Republic) and the spread of agriculture in Europe. North Atlantic Archaeology 1, 103-115.

Pettitt, P. B. (2008). Art and the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition in Europe: comments on the archaeological arguments for an Early Upper Palaeolithic antiquity of the Grotte Chauvet art. Journal of Human Evolution 55(5), 908-17.

Zvelebil, M. and Pettitt, P. B. (2008). Human condition, life, and death at an Early Neolithic settlement: bioarchaeological analyses of the Vedrovice cemetery and their biosocial implications for the spread of agriculture in Central Europe. Anthropologie (Brno) XLVI(2-3), 195-218. (J)

Pettitt, P. B., Bahn, P., and Ripoll, S. (eds.) (2007) Palaeolithic Cave Art at Creswell Crags in European Context. Oxford: University Press.

Pettitt, P. B. and Pike, A. W. G. (2007) Dating European Palaeolithic cave art: progress, prospects, problems. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory (14/1), 27-47.

Zvelebil. M, Lukes, A. And Pettitt, P. B. (2010). The emergence of the LBK culture: search for the ancestors. In Gronenborn, D. and Petrasch, J. (eds.) The Spread of the Neolithic to Central Europe. Mainz: Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, 301-326.

Pettitt, P. B. (2009). The rise of modern humans. In Scarre, C. (ed) The Human Past (second edition). London: Thames and Hudson, 124-73.

Pettitt, P. B., Bahn, P. and Züchner, C. (2009) The Chauvet conundrum: are claims for the ‘birthplace of art’ premature? In Bahn, P. (ed.) An Enquiring Mind: Studies in Honor of Alexander Marshack. Oxford: Oxbow and Cambridge MA: American School of Prehistoric Research Monograph Series, 239-62.

Pettitt, P. B. (2009) The Neanderthals. In Cunliffe, B., Gosden, C. and Joyce, R. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Archaeology. Oxford: University Press, 332-70.

Pettitt, P. B. (2008). The British Upper Palaeolithic. In Pollard, J. (ed.) Prehistoric Britain. London: Blackwell Studies in Global Archaeology, 18-57.

Pettitt, P. B. and Bahn, P. (2007) Rock art and art mobilier of the British Upper Palaeolithic. In Mazel, A., Nash, G. and Waddington, C. (eds.) Art as Metaphor: the Prehistoric Rock Art of Britain. Oxford: Archaeopress, 9-38.

Pettitt, P. B. (2006) The living dead and the dead living: burials, figurines and social performance in the European Mid Upper Palaeolithic. In Knüsel, C. and Gowland, R. (eds.) The Social Archaeology of Funerary Remains. Oxford: Oxbow, 292-308.

Full publications list

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