Staff Profile:Professor Steven Mithen

Name:

Professor Steven Mithen

Job Title:

Dean and Professor of Archaeology

Responsibilities:

Areas of Interest:

Steven's research interests cover from the origin of Homo at c. 2 million years ago to the origin and spread of farming, up to its appearance in NW Europe at around 6000 years ago. His specific interests fall into four themes:

1. Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Hunter-Gatherers and Farmers. For this he directs major field projects in western Scotland and southern Jordan involving the survey and excavation of prehistoric settlements. For his current excavations in Jordan see the Wadi Faynan project.

2. Computational archaeology. Building on his original PhD work, Steven has led several projects involving the use of mathematical modelling and computer simulation in archaeology, concerned with human decision making, mega-fauna hunting and extinction, and hominin dispersals from Africa.

3. Evolution of the Human Mind, Language and Music. Steven has been one of the pioneers of cognitive archaeology, drawing on research within psychology, neuroscience and philosophy of mind for the interpretation of the archaeological record. In 1996 he established the inter-disciplinary MA in Cognitive Evolution which he convened until 2001.

4. Water, Life and Civilisation. Steven is the lead PI on the Leverhulme Funded (£1.24m) project of this name, involving researchers from Meteorology, Archaeology, Geography and Environmental science at the University of Reading. See www.waterlifecivilisation.org

Research groups / Centres:

Scientific Archaeology Research Group

Publications:

Qualifications:

BA (Sheffield), MSc (York), PhD (Cambridge), FBA, FSA, FSA (Scot)

Key Facts

Steven Mithen has a BA (hons) in Prehistory & Archaeology from Sheffield University, an MSc in Biological Computation from York University and a PhD in Archaeology from Cambridge University. Between 1987 and 1992 he was a Research Fellow at Trinity Hall and then Lecturer in Archaeology at Cambridge. After moving to the University of Reading, he was promoted to Senior Lecturer (1996), Reader (1998) and then Professor of Early Prehistory (2000). In August 2002 he was appointed as the first Head of the School of Human & Environmental Sciences, formed by the Departments of Archaeology, Geography, Soil Science and the Postgraduate Institute of Sedimentology, a post he held until August 2008 when be became Dean of the Faculty of Science. He was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2004.

Research grants

Since 1992 Steven has been awarded grants of £2,874,919 as PI. This has included £391,816 from NERC, £1,032,414 from the AHRC (and its HRB predecessor) and awards from the EU, British Academy, Historic Scotland, Society of Antiquaries of London, Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and the Council for British Research in the Levant.

His currently active grants are:

• £1,235,713 from Leverhulme Trust for Water, Life & Civilisation
• £191,517 from AHRC for The role of shell middens in Mesolithic settlement of Scotland
• £734,196 from the AHRC for the excavation of WF16, an early Neolithic site in Southern Jordan

Selected Publications

Single authored books

Mithen, S.J. 2005. The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 374 pp. ISBN 13-780297-643173, ISBN 10-0-297-64317 7

2005 US Edition, Harvard University Press

2006 UK paperback, Orion

2007 Japanese edition, Hayakawa Press

2007 Italian edition, Codice Edizione

2007 Spanish edition, Editorial Critica

2008 Russian edition, Veche publishers

2009 Turkish edition, Tubitak publishers

2009 Basque edition, Klasikoak publishers

Winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Book competition 2007

Mithen, S.J. 2003. After The Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5000 BC. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 622 pp. ISBN 0 297 64318 5

2004 UK paperback, Orion ISBN 0-75381-392-0

2004 US edition, Harvard University Press

2004 Brazilian edition, Imago Editora

2004 Czech edition, B B Art Publishing

2009 Turkish edition, Dogus Iletisim

Long-listed for the Aventis Science Book prize 2004 (12 books)

Long-listed for the British Academy Book prize 2004 (10 books)

Named by Discover Magazine 2005 as one of the 20 best science books in the US for 2004

Mithen, S.J. 1996. The Prehistory of the Mind:A Search for the Origins of Art, Science and Religion. London & New York: Thames & Hudson. 288 pp ISBN 0-500-05081-3

UK paperback published in 1998 by Orion ISBN 0 75380 204 X

1999 Japanese edition, Tokyo: UNI

1999 Korean edition, Seoul: Eric Yang

1998 Spanish edition, Barcelona: Critica

2000 Turkish edition, Ankara: Dost Kitabevi Yayinlan

2003 Brazilian edition, Editora Unesp

2008 Greek edition, Vanias publications

Mithen, S.J. 1990. Thoughtful Foragers: A Study of Prehistoric Decision Making. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 289 pp. ISBN 0-521-35700-2

Books as editor

Finlayson, B. & Mithen, S.J. (eds) 2007. The Early Prehistory of Wadi Faynan, Southern Jordan: Archaeological Survey of Wadis Faynan, Ghuwayr and al Bustan and Evaluation of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Site of WF16. Oxford: Council for British Archaeology in the Levant/Oxbow Books. 600pp ISBN 978-1-84217-212 41-8217-212-3

Mithen, S.J. (ed.) 2000. Hunter-Gatherer Landscape Archaeology: The Southern Hebrides Mesolithic Project 1988-1998. Volume 2. Archaeological Fieldwork on Colonsay, Computer Modelling, Experimental Archaeology and Final Interpretations. Cambridge: The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. 296 pp. ISBN 1-902937-11-2

Mithen, S. (ed.) 2000. Hunter-Gatherer Landscape Archaeology: The Southern Hebrides Mesolithic Project 1988-1998. Volume 1: Project Development, Palaeoenvironmental Studies and Archaeological Fieldwork on Islay. Cambridge: The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. 345 pp. ISBN 1-902937-07-4

Mithen, S.J. (ed.) 1998. Creativity in Human Evolution and Prehistory. London: Routledge. 300 pp ISBN 0-415-16096-0

Recent Journal articles

Mithen, S.J. & Parsons, L. 2008. The brain as a cultural artefact. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 18, 401-410

Mithen, S.J., Jenkins, E., Jamjoum, K., Nuimat, S., Nortcliff, S. & Finlayson, B.F. 2008. Experimental crop growing in Jordan to develop methodology for the identification of ancient crop irrigation. World Archaeology 40, 6-25.

Whitehead, P.G., Smith, S.J., Wade, A.J., Mithen S.J., Finlayson, B.L., & Sellwood, B. 2008. Modelling of hydrology and potential population levels at Bronze Age Jawa, Northern Jordan: A Monte Carlo approach to cope with uncertainty. Journal of Archaeological Science 35, 517-529.

Hughes, J., Haywood, A.J., Mithen, S.J., Sellwood, B.W., Valdes, P.J. 2007. Investigating early hominin dispersal patterns: developing a framework for climate data integration. Journal of Human Evolution 53, 465-474.

Recent book chapters

Smith, S., Hughes, J. & Mithen, S.J. 2009. Explaining global patterns in Lower Palaeolithic technology: Simulations of hominin dispersals and cultural transmission using 'Stepping Out' . In: S. Shennan (ed) Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution, pp. 175-190. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press

Mithen, S.J. 2009. The prehistory of the religious mind. In N. Spurway (ed) Theology, Evolution and the Mind, pp. 10-41. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press.

Mithen, S.J. 2008. The inevitability of religion. An archaeologist's view from the past. In A. Bentley (ed) The Edge of Reason: Science and Religion in the Modern World, pp. 82-94. London: Continuum Press.

Mithen, S.J. 2007. Seven steps in the evolution of the human imagination. In I. Roth (ed.). Imaginative Minds, pp. 3-29. Oxford: Proceedings of the British Academy 147/Oxford University Press.

Mithen, S.J. 2007. Bases evolutivas y prehistoria temprana del transporte humano. In J.J. Almagro et al. (eds) El ArteDel Automóvil, pp. 63-73. Madrid: Mapfre/Fundación Eduardo Barreiros

Mithen, S.J. 2007. Did farming arise from a misapplication of social intelligence? In N. Emery, N. Clayton & C. Frith (eds) Social Intelligence: From Brain to Culture, pp. 353-374. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mithen, S.J. 2007. Music and the Origin of Modern Human. In: P. Mellars, K. Boyle, O. Bar-Yosef & C. Stringer (eds) Re-Thinking The Human Revolution, pp. 107-117. Cambridge: McDonald Institute monographs.

Mithen, S.J., Pirie, A.E. & Smith, S & Wicks, K.2007. The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Western Scotland: A review and new evidence from Tiree. In A. Whittle & V. Cummings (eds.) Going Over: The Mesolithic-Neolithic Transition in North-West Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press/Proceedings of the British Academy 144, 511-541.