Rebecca Wragg Sykes is a British paleolithic archaeologist, broadcaster, popular science writer and author who lives in Wales. She is interested in the Middle Palaeolithic, specifically in the lives of Neanderthals; and she is one of the founders of TrowelBlazers, a website set up to celebrate the lives of women in archaeology, palaeontology and geology. She is a patron of Humanists UK. [1]
Wragg Sykes studied as an undergraduate at the University of Bristol, before gaining her BA in Archaeology in 2003, and MA in the Archaeology of Human Origins from the University of Southampton in 2004. Her doctoral thesis from the University of Sheffield, which examined evidence for late Neanderthals in Britain, was awarded in 2010. [2]
Following her Ph.D, Wragg Sykes was awarded a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship at Université de Bordeaux, working in the PACEA laboratory on Neanderthal and prehistoric sites in the Massif Central mountains. She is currently an Honorary Fellow in the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool, and chercheur bénévole (Honorary Fellow) at the Université de Bordeaux. [3] [4]
Wragg Sykes has written for The Guardian , [5] Scientific American [6] and Aeon , [7] and appeared on history and science programmes for BBC Radio 3 [8] and Radio 4. [9]
In 2020, Wragg Sykes published Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art [10] which won the 2021 Current Archaeology Book of the Year Award, [11] [12] the 2021 Hessel-Tiltman History Prize, the 2022 Public Anthropology Award from the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland and the 2022 President's Award from The Prehistoric Society. Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love Death and Art was also a finalist in the 2022 Premio Galileo Awards and has been favourably reviewed by Current Archaeology, [13] London Review of Books , [14] Nature , [15] The Guardian [16] and The New York Times ; [17] reviews have been published in other media outlets as well. [18] [19] [20]
Yuval Noah Harari, author of the bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind , thought Wragg Sykes had done "a remarkable job synthesizing thousands of academic studies into a single accessible narrative". [17] Alice Roberts, author and presenter of the television series The Incredible Human Journey , said it was "a wonderful portrait of these enigmatic, long-lost relatives". [10] Writing in The Sunday Times about the best philosophy and ideas books of the year 2020, James McConnachie praised how it reveals the latest theories about Neanderthal life, from the tools they used to the funerals they performed. [21]
Wragg Sykes has also written for DK and was one of the authors for the book Big History, [22] although she and the other authors were "aligned with" the OER Project rather than members of the organization. [23]
In 2013, Wragg Sykes started, together with other female scientists, the TrowelBlazers project, a public-led experiment in participatory archaeology, originating from the lack of visibility of women in science. TrowelBlazers has highlighted women from the fields of archaeology, geology and palaeontology. [24]
Svante Pääbo is a Swedish geneticist and Nobel Laureate who specialises in the field of evolutionary genetics. As one of the founders of paleogenetics, he has worked extensively on the Neanderthal genome. In 1997, he became founding director of the Department of Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Since 1999, he has been an honorary professor at Leipzig University; he currently teaches molecular evolutionary biology at the university. He is also an adjunct professor at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan.
The American Humanist Association (AHA) is a non-profit organization in the United States that advances secular humanism.
The PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize is awarded to the best work of non-fiction of historical content covering a period up to and including World War II, and published in the year of the award. The books are to be of high literary merit, but not primarily academic. The prize is organized by the English PEN. Marjorie Hessell-Tiltman was a member of PEN during the 1960s and 1970s; on her death in 1999 she bequeathed £100,000 to the PEN Literary Foundation to found a prize in her name. Each year's winner receives £2,000.
Colin Michael Maurice Cashman, Baron Cashman, is a British actor, dancer, politician, and LGBT rights activist. A member of the Labour Party, he served as a Member of the European Parliament for the West Midlands from 1999 to 2014. He has been a member of the House of Lords since 2014. He is a patron of Humanists UK.
Night at the Museum is a 2006 American fantasy comedy film directed by Shawn Levy and written by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon. It is based on the 1993 children's book of the same name by Croatian illustrator Milan Trenc. The film had an ensemble cast of Ben Stiller in the lead role, Carla Gugino, Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, Bill Cobbs, and Robin Williams. It tells the story of a divorced father who applies for a job as a night watchman at New York City's American Museum of Natural History and subsequently discovers that the exhibits, animated by a magical Egyptian artifact, the tablet of Akhmenrah, come to life at night. 20th Century Fox released the film on December 22, 2006, and it grossed $574.5 million worldwide, becoming the 5th highest-grossing film of 2006, but received mixed reviews from critics.
Kindred is one's family and relations by kinship. It may also refer to:
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is an American philosopher, novelist, and public intellectual. She has written ten books, both fiction and non-fiction. She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy of science from Princeton University, and is sometimes grouped with novelists such as Richard Powers and Alan Lightman, who create fiction that is knowledgeable of, and sympathetic toward, science.
Alice May Roberts is an English academic, TV presenter and author. Since 2012 she has been Professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham. She was president of the charity Humanists UK between January 2019 and May 2022. She is now a vice president of the organisation.
Neanderthals are an extinct group of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. The type specimen, Neanderthal 1, was found in 1856 in the Neander Valley in present-day Germany.
Larkin Poe is an American roots rock band led by sisters Rebecca Lovell and Megan Lovell. The band originated in north Georgia and is currently based in Nashville, Tennessee. Known for their strong southern harmonies, heavy electric guitar riffs, steel guitar, Larkin Poe often draws comparisons to the style of the Allman Brothers. The Lovell sisters have gained recognition for their energetic performances and musical prowess.
Yuval Noah Harari is an Israeli author, public intellectual, historian and professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of the popular science bestsellers Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2014), Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016), and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018). His writings examine free will, consciousness, intelligence, happiness, and suffering.
Victoria Louise "Tori" Herridge, born 1980, is a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London and one of the founders of TrowelBlazers, which celebrates women archaeologists, palaeontologists and geologists.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is a book by Yuval Noah Harari, first published in Hebrew in Israel in 2011 based on a series of lectures Harari taught at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and in English in 2014. The book, focusing on Homo sapiens, surveys the history of humankind, starting from the Stone Age and going up to the twenty-first century. The account is situated within a framework that intersects the natural sciences with the social sciences.
The Dig is a 2021 British drama film directed by Simon Stone, based on the 2007 novel of the same name by John Preston, which reimagines the events of the 1939 excavation of Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, England. It stars Carey Mulligan, Ralph Fiennes, Lily James, Johnny Flynn, Ben Chaplin, Ken Stott, Archie Barnes, and Monica Dolan.
TrowelBlazers is a project aimed at increasing the representation of women in the fields of archaeology, geology and palaeontology. The project is run by Brenna Hassett, Victoria Herridge, Suzanne Pilaar Birch and Rebecca Wragg Sykes.
Brenna R. Hassett is an American British bioarchaeologist at University College London (UCL), author, public speaker and one of the founders of TrowelBlazers, which celebrates women archaeologists, paleontologists and geologists.
Amara Thornton is a historian of archaeology. Her work focuses on British archaeologists in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She situates archaeology within its broader historical context, including the history of tourism, the history of publishing and popular media, the history of education, government policies and women's history. She is an Honorary Research Associate at UCL.
Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art is a 2020 book by Rebecca Wragg Sykes that examines Neanderthals. The book has three "positive" reviews and eight "rave" reviews according to review aggregator Book Marks.
The Neanderthals Rediscovered: How Modern Science is Rewriting Their Story is a 2013 non-fiction book by Dimitra Papagianni and Michael A. Morse, published by Thames & Hudson. The book focuses on the history, culture, and extinction of Neanderthals, the closest known relatives of anatomically modern humans. Neanderthals are widely stereotyped as primitive or unintelligent compared to modern humans, a myth dispelled by research in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Written to summarize substantial advances in Neanderthal research in the previous few decades, The Neanderthals Rediscovered addresses subjects like how Neanderthals used tools, how they hunted, the societies they formed, and potential reasons for their extinction. The book is fully illustrated, including 16 all-illustration pages.
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