Our ancestors neither looked, or behaved, like us. This subject introduces our tool-using ancestors, the worlds they inhabited and the activities in which they engaged. We investigate the way in which archaeologists build a picture of the remote past from the bits of broken-up animal bones and chipped stone tools that survive in the archaeological record. This provides a springboard for discussing current understanding of the changes in technology, diet, social organisation and cognition that characterised our evolutionary story. We have a particular interest in the origin of our own species and in the establishment of modern cognition and behaviour.

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