John Shea

John J. Shea is Professor of Anthropology at Stony Brook University in New York.  Born in Hamilton, Massachusetts (USA) he was educated at local schools, Boston University (BA 1982), and Harvard University (Ph.D. 1991).  An archaeologist, Shea is renowned for his expertise in stone tool analysis and for his contributions to Southwest Asian and Eastern African prehistory.  He has excavated in Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania.  His research explores ways to link the archaeological stone tool evidence to major issues in human evolution.  His published works include Out of Africa 1: The First Hominin Colonization of Eurasia (2010), Stone Tools in the Paleolithic and Neolithic Near East: A Guide (2013), Stone Tools in Human Evolution: Behavioral Differences among Technological Primates (2016), and forthcoming in 2019, Prehistoric Stone Tools of Eastern Africa: A Guide.  Shea’s stoneworking demonstrations appear in numerous television documentaries and in the United States’ National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.  He resides in Stony Brook, New York and Santa Fe, New Mexico.