Dr James Clark

James Clark is an Early-Career Research Fellow at the College, having completed his BA, MPhil and PhD at St. John’s College, Cambridge. His research focuses on behavioural variability across the evolution of our genus Homo, from its earliest species through to the appearance and dispersal of Homo sapiens. He works across both archaeology and anthropology, and is particularly interested in human responses to both short- and long-term climate change through their technological adaptations through time. He also uses technology as a way of tracing human population history, dispersal, and demography.

For his MPhil research, James utilised geometric morphometrics to explore regional variations in the shape of handaxes through time—a tool that was produced by ancient humans across Africa, western Asia, and Europe over the course of 1.5 million years. His PhD explored the origins of this enigmatic tool form in Eastern Africa, by examining their functional basis and the role that seasonality played in structuring their use. He has fieldwork experience in Spain and Kenya, as well as active fieldwork projects in the UK.