Christopher Knüsel

I am co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Acrhaeothanatology and have been working to synthesize bioarchaeology and archaeothanatology and the anglophone and francophone research in these areas.

I am also involved in a “Grand Programme de Recherche” (GPR), entitled the “Human Past”, at the University of Bordeaux under the leadership of Francesco D’Errico and Adeline La Cabec.  This programme “seeks to understand the trajectory by which a primate adapted to African environments, evolved, in the space of just a few million years, into a species that has come to occupy every ecosystem across the planet by developing cognitive, technological and social adaptations that are unparalleled in the rest of the animal world. This long process has been interspersed with many tipping points that have permanently reconfigured the pre-existing equilibrium in independent but highly-correlated domains, such as biology, environmental adaptation, cognition, communication, technology and social organisation. Documenting the nature and chronology of these tipping points and understanding the mechanisms and processes that have led to such quantum leaps is the main overarching goal of this ambitious interdisciplinary project.”