Lyn Wadley is an honorary professor of

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...

, and also affiliated jointly with the Archaeology Department and the Institute for Evolution at the

University of the Witwatersrand The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (), is a multi-campus South African public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg. It is more commonly known as Wits University or Wits ( or ). The university ...

Johannesburg, South Africa Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a Megacity#List of megacities, megacity, and is List of urban areas by p ...

Education

Wadley received her master's degree from the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...

in 1977, and her PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1986.

Career

Wadley taught in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies and the Evolutionary Studies Institute,

from 1982 to 2004. Wadley began her career researching social and ecological issues in the Later Stone Age in South Africa. This included the first considerations of gender in the archaeological record of Southern Africa, as articulated by Mazel "this has firmly placed the study of gender on the South African archaeological map". She directed excavations at multiple Holocene sites in Magaliesberg and then began working on older, Pleistocene sites. Professor Wadley spent eleven years excavating the Rose Cottage Cave in the Eastern Free State. From 1998-2011, her excavations at Sibudu Rock Shelter in KwaZulu-Natal led to a series of insights and publications about early human cognitive ability. Wadley has claimed that the relationship between the use of compound adhesives and compound paints is clear evidence for modern thought processes, including multi-tasking, found in South Africa 100,000 years ago. Although she retired from the university, she still supervises

Ph.D A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

students. She has led an archaeologist team at the Sibudu rock shelter in KwaZulu-Natal, and has uncovered new evidence for early humans' cognitive ability. She is listed on the

Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters Corporation ( ) is a Canadian multinational media conglomerate. The company was founded in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where it is headquartered at the Bay Adelaide Centre. Thomson Reuters was created by the Thomson Corpora ...

list of highly cited researchers.Thomson Reuters list of highly cited researchers
In July 2019 she was elected as Fellow of the British Academy.

Research areas

In her Ph.D research she developed a model of the social organisation of

Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togeth ...

Later Stone Age hunter-gatherers focussing on seasonal aggregation and dispersal of groups. By excavations she identified a possible aggregation site, Jubilee shelter, and a possible dispersal site, Cave James. After her Ph.D she started excavating Rose Cottage Cave in the Free State province. Her research focused on the Holocene and

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

Later Stone Age and on the Middle Stone Age. The excavations yielded important data on the technological organisation of the Middle Stone Age

Howiesons Poort Howiesons Poort (also called HP) is a lithic technology cultural period in the Middle Stone Age in Africa named after the Howieson's Poort Shelter archeological site near Grahamstown in South Africa. It seems to have lasted around 5,000 years bet ...

industry and on the cognitive complexity of modern human behaviour during this part of the Middle Stone Age. Wadley is the director of the research unit ACACIA (Ancient Cognition and Culture in Africa) in the University of the Witwatersrand. The goal of this research unit is to examine issues of cognition and culture in the Middle Stone Age in South Africa. For the past 12 years,

Sibudu Cave Sibudu Cave is a rock shelter in a sandstone cliff in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It is an important Middle Stone Age site occupied, with some gaps, from years ago to years ago. Evidence of some of the earliest examples of modern h ...

in KwaZulu-Natal provided the archaeological material analysed by the ACACIA staff and graduate students. Wadley also conducted experimental archaeology to understand technical processes which were adopted during the times of the Middle Stone Age.

Published work

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References

External links

Deacon, Janette 2008. Modelling the MSA - a tribute to Lyn Wadley, Goodwin Series.
* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Wadley, Lyn Living people 21st-century women scientists Fellows of the British Academy Fellows of the Royal Society of South Africa Place of birth missing (living people) South African archaeologists South African women scientists University of Cape Town alumni University of the Witwatersrand academics University of the Witwatersrand alumni South African women archaeologists Year of birth missing (living people)