Rob Dinnis

Rob’s main research interest is the occupation of Europe by early modern humans, particularly the dynamics of cultural change during the Early and Mid Upper Palaeolithic. He has worked with collections from sites in Britain, Belgium and France, and more recently the Russian sites of Kostënki and Sungir’. Rob is also a keen cave archaeologist and currently directs excavations at Kents Cavern and Ffynnon Beuno Cave.

Alexander A. Bessudnov

Alexander is interested in the Upper Palaeolithic of Eastern Europe, especially stone tool assemblages, radiocarbon dating and cultural development. Since 2002 he has been a permanent member of the Kostënki archaeological expedition, focusing on investigation of Early and Mid Upper Palaeolithic cultural layers.

Lars Anderson

Lars’ research focuses on understanding how prehistoric hunter-gatherer systems functioned and changed over time, primarily through analysis of how people made and used their stone tools. He explores these ideas in southern France at several early modern human sites attributed to the Aurignacian archaeological culture, including Régismont-le-Haut, Brignol, Champ-Parel 3, Abri Castanet and La Tuto de Camalhot.

Thibaut Devièse

Thibaut’s research is mainly focused on the development of new methods for the characterisation and dating of organic materials from archaeological sites, using chromatographic and mass spectrometric techniques. One of his research priorities is improving the sample preparation for radiocarbon dating of contaminated and/or poorly preserved Upper Palaeolithic bones.

Alexander Dudin

Alexander works at the Kostënki State Archaeological Museum. His work focuses on systematic archaeological study of the region and the communication of research results. He has a particular interest in site formation processes: the factors and conditions that led to the creation of archaeological deposits and the post-depositional alterations that have affected them.

Damien Flas

Damien’s main research interest is the onset of the Upper Palaeolithic, focusing in particular on the study of stone tool assemblages. He has worked mainly on archaeological collections from Northern Europe and Central Asia, and more recently has worked on the Protoaurignacian and Aurignacian of Southern France.

Tom Higham

Tom is the Deputy Director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford. He is interested in improving the reliability and accuracy of the AMS radiocarbon technique, particularly in developing and applying improvements methods of pretreatment to decontaminate bone proteins, as well as using Bayesian modelling methods to interpret the results. Tom currently leads the ERC-funded Palaeochron project.

Anton Lada

Anton is interested in the Upper Palaeolithic of Eastern Europe and Kostënki in particular. He is focused on lithic analysis and the implication of contemporary statistical methods such as Geometric Morphometrics to the study of lithics. He is a Junior Fellow at the Institute for the History of Material Culture and a member of the Kostenki field team.

Alexander Otcherednoy

Alexander’s research is focused on the technology and typology of stone tools, especially bifacial tools. He also works comparing key Middle Palaeolithic sites and sequences from Central and Eastern Europe with a view to understanding cultural change during this time. Since 2009 he has been a permanent member of the Interdisciplinary Middle Palaeolithic Research Group, which draws together specialists from Saint Petersburg (IIMK) and Moscow (IGRAS).

Abi Pate

Abi is a researcher with a background in Palaeolithic Archaeology and Palaeobiology. She is broadly interested in human evolution, particularly the relationship between ecological and cultural change. She is also passionate about science communication, and created the 3D digital artefact models on this site.

Andrei Sinitsyn

Andrei is an archaeologist specialising in the Upper Palaeolithic of Eastern Europe, working most notably on the Early and Mid Upper Palaeolithic sites at Kostënki. He has worked at the Institute for the History of Material Culture since 1972, and since 1998 has led the Kostënki expedition.