Tomos Proffitt

Tomos Proffitt is a reseacher at the Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behaviour, University of Algarve, Campus de Gambelas, Portugal. Proffitt is a Palaeolithic archaeologist interested in technology and how it shapes behaviour. Specifically, his research focuses on how and when the first technology emerged in our linegae, how and why it developed and varied over time and how it was made and used. To these ends, Proffitt focuses on traditional archaeological techniques such as excavation, lithic analysis and GIS, as well as experimental archaeology and primate archaeology. He is currently invovled in research in Brazil, East and West Africa, the United Kingdom and Thailand, and he is also interetsed in how new technological advancemnts can help us better interogate the archaeological record. Profitt completed his PhD at University College London (UCL) in 2016, where he studied the Oldowan archaeological assemblages from Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. After his PhD, Proffitt worked as a postdoctral researcher at the University of Oxford, where he was fortunate to be able to study primate stone tool use. After that, he moved back to UCL as a British Academy Fellow and in 2020 as a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.