Eleanor M. Williams

Acheulean Expediency Potential: Handaxe Manufacturing Time Costs, Covariates and Skill Despite decades of replicative experiments, the fundamental question “how long did it take to make an Acheulean handaxe” remains poorly understood. Archaeologists routinely base influential Pleisto...

Acheulean Expediency Potential: Handaxe Manufacturing Time Costs, Covariates and Skill www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Postcranial fossils from the site of Drimolen in the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa provide further insights into hominin paleobiology at approximately 2.0 million years ago!
New study by Caley M. Orr et al.: anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Interested in Oldowan stone tools and early human behaviour?
Develop your #PhD with #ICArEHB through the #FCT #PhD #Fellowships 2026.

#Archaeology #Research #Prehistory #ScienceCareers #PhDLife

Afar fossil shows broad distribution and versatility of Paranthropus - Nature With its attribution to Paranthropus, a 2.6-million-year-old partial mandible expands the range of the genus into the Afar region of Ethiopia and adds to our understanding of hominin evolution in east...

I am really excited to share news of this new jaw...until now Paranthropus had been conspicuously absent from the Afar.

Fieldwork at Mille-Logya is not easy, and this fossil is the result of years of very hard work (and a lot of days of dry screening by our team)!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The first article from the Cambridge Prisms: Extinction special issue on 'Hominin Cultural and Biological Extinctions', guest edited by @jjrowan.bsky.social and Dr Alastair Key, has just been published. 

A continuous record of early human stone tool production: doi.org/10.1017/ext....

KNM-ER 64061, most complete Homo habilis skeleton yet (Koobi Fora) shows primitive limb proportions: long forearms, thick cortices, small body mass & ~160 cm stature. Upper limbs like early Homo, but proportions differ from H. erectus
Grine et al anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

PanAF Sessions The Local Organizing Committee is excited that almost 70 sessions and workshops will occur at PanAF Moz 2026. Pan-African Association members and non-members are welcome to submit paper abstracts t…

🚨CALL FOR PAPERS!🚨 @lucytimbrell96.bsky.social and I are running a session (S17) at PanAf2026 in Mozambique, titled: Pan-African Homo sapiens evolution: linking processes with data. More info: panaf2026moz.com/panaf-sessio... & submit an abstract: panaf2026moz.com/paper-submis... deadline March 15th

A great start to 2026! My paper with Alastair Key is out #openaccess in Cambridge Prisms Extinction.

We examine temporal continuity in the African ESA - no significant gaps, no evidence for loss of tool making abilities c.3.3-1.5 Ma.

@cam-archaeology.bsky.social

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Top Stories in Human Evolution of 2025 - PLOS SciComm By Ryan McRae and Briana Pobiner 2025 has been quite the wild year! With more exciting stories in human evolution than we…

My colleague Ryan McRae and I wrote our annual round up of top discoveries in human evolution from this year for the @plos.org Sci Comm blog - enjoy! scicomm.plos.org/2025/12/19/t...

Unearthing What Archaeologists Can and Cannot Know An archaeologist studying 1,000-year-old dog burials reflects on the need for evidence and imagination in archaeology.

“What archaeology asks of everyone is an openness to alternate worlds. An understanding that your society, with its ways of working, worshipping, learning, loving—even knowing a dog—is just one permutation of endless human and beyond human possibilities.”
www.sapiens.org/archaeology/...

Ochre use in burial practices in Thailand, from the Neolithic to the Iron Age | Antiquity | Cambridge Core Ochre use in burial practices in Thailand, from the Neolithic to the Iron Age

New paper by @sarah-paris.bsky.social 🚨

"The transformation of ochre from a loose pigment used widely in early burials to rare pellet deposits in later interments mirrors broader processes of cultural change, technological development and ideological realignment in Southeast Asia."

Glad it went well!

New fossils reveal the hand of Paranthropus boisei - Nature Analyses of newly discovered hand and foot bones of a Paranthropus boisei specimen provide insight into possible tool use and other palaeobiology characteristics among Plio-Pleistocene hominin species...

Paranthropus boisei is a human fossil cousin w/ giant jaws and teeth that lived in East Africa ~2.6 to 1.3 million years ago. Whether it could make & use tools has been a paleoanthropological mystery since the 1960s. Our new paper describes the first firmly associated hand and foot. 1/

Great time visiting Lucy and Selam in Prague this weekend! Amazing to see the original fossils, well worth the trip

Last week I matriculated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge to start my NERC-funded (CREATES DLA) PhD in Archaeology!

@caiuscollege.bsky.social
@cam.ac.uk
@cam-archaeology.bsky.social

We are hiring a Project Co-ordinator! 🚨

Are you extremely organised with great interpersonal skills?
Able to multitask efficiently?
Interested in African prehistory?
Keen to work with an enthusiastic team?
We want to hear from you!

Closing date: 17 October, 2025

Poster Session 2 #ESHE2025

83 wonderful posters. 169 in total.

Palaeotrails’ Jesse Martin & @martamlahr.bsky.social on detecting microevolutionary trends in fossil hominin populations.

When in Rome...

#Colosseum

Young Turkana herders guide camels across Kenya’s arid landscape near Lake Turkana at sunset.

Pastoralism remains central to survival in the Turkana of northwest Kenya, where heat and water scarcity pose constant challenges. New research uncovers the genetic signatures that underlie adaptation to arid living in this pastoralist community.

Learn more this week: https://scim.ag/4nxcJbx

When less is more: risk, reward and optimisation in Acheulean handaxe manufacture and the impact of skill As the most numerous manifestations of technology across the Palaeolithic record, linking stone tool artefacts to past hominin cognition and expertise…

Happy to share the first paper from my PhD! Open access in a special issue of JAS, 'The Mind in Deep Time: Interdisciplinary explorations of cognitive evolution'

When less is more: risk, reward and optimisation in Acheulean handaxe manufacture and the impact of skill

share.google/hj43OR6QWXtc...

Hominin glacial-stage occupation 712,000 to 424,000 years ago at Fordwich Pit, Old Park (Canterbury, UK) - Nature Ecology & Evolution The authors report Acheulean hominin occupation of eastern Britain during glacial marine isotope stages 17–16 and again in glacial marine isotope stage 12 via stone tools in sediments dated to 712,000...

Very much enjoyed working on this paper. An important site for #Palaeolithic archaeology in the UK.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Last sunrise in Turkana before heading back to Nairobi. What an incredible few months it's been!

#kenya #fieldwork
@palaeotrails.bsky.social

📣 PUBLISHED OPEN ACCESS 📣

In a new study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Cambridge researchers explore the role of skill for Lower Palaeolithic handaxe manufacture through flint knapping experiments.

👉 doi.org/10.1016/j.ja...

🧵

Such good news! Really pleased for you @martamlahr.bsky.social! 🎉

Justus Erus Edung was only 25 years old when he discovered Kenyanthropus platyops in a team led by Prof. Meave Leakey in 1999.

This 3.5 million year old “flat-faced” skull quickly grabbed international headlines and changed the course of human evolution.

#fossils #turkana #humanevolution

3D scanning these beauties with Ng'ipalajem!
@palaeotrails.bsky.social

#handaxe #turkana

The joy of sorting LSA lithics from Turkana under the guidance of @robfoley.bsky.social

Follow us on Instagram for more www.instagram.com/palaeotrails...