April Nowell

April Nowell is a Paleolithic archaeologist and Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Victoria. She directs an international team of researchers in the study of Lower and Middle Paleolithic sites in Jordan and collaborates with colleagues on the study of Pleistocene rock art in Australia and Europe and on ostrich eggshell beads in South Africa. In 2016, she and her colleagues working in Jordan published the world’s oldest identifiable blood on stone tools, demonstrating that 300,000 years ago Homo erectus ate a range of animals from duck to rhinoceros. She is known for her publications on cognitive archaeology, Paleolithic art, the archaeology of children and the relationship between science, pop culture, and the media. Her work has appeared in Evolutionary Anthropology, Journal of Human Evolution, Journal of Archaeological Science, Current Anthropology and the Cambridge Archaeological Journal among others. Her edited volumes include In the Mind’s Eye: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the Evolution of Human Intelligence (2001), Stone Tools and the Evolution of Human Cognition (2010) with Prof. Iain Davidson, the Archaeology of Night: Life After Dark in the Ancient World (2018) with Dr. Nancy Gonlin, Making Scenes: Global Perspectives on Scenes in Rock Art with Prof. Iain Davidson (2020) and the forthcoming Culturing the Body: Prehistoric Perspectives on Identity and Sociality with Dr. Benjamin Collins. She is also the author of the forthcoming book Growing Up in the Ice Age: Fossil and Archaeological Evidence of the Lived lives of Plio-Pleistocene Children Watch her TEDx talk “Paleo Porn” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar92Cdp0waY