Prof Christopher S Henshilwood

Ambassador for Archaeology

Christopher Henshilwood is interested in the development of complex technology, social systems, subsistence, environment, syntactic language, and material culture associated with early Homo sapiens, especially those groups who evolved in southern Africa between 100,000 to 50,000 years ago. He has concentrated on finding archaeological sites that were occupied by H. sapiens during the Later- and Middle Stone Age and has excavated 20 of these sites in southern Africa.

He has authored or co-authored more than 85 peer reviewed, wide-ranging papers on the origins of language and symbolism, the effects of climatic variation on human demographics, and on the theory of human behavioural evolution and published two books.

Chris Henshilwood - Board - Gouritz Cluster Biosphere Reserve
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Chris currently leads research involving more than forty foremost scientists in diverse fields in Europe, Africa, the United Kingdom and the USA. He is a Distinguished Professor and holds a 15 year SARChI Research Chair in Origins of Human Behaviour (2008 to 2022) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and is a Professor and Director of a ten year Centre of Excellence, the Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour (SapienCE) at the University of Bergen, Norway funded by the Research Council of Norway (2017 to 2026).

A core focus of his projects is to encourage young researchers, especially women and the previously disadvantaged, in Africa and Europe.