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Staff profile

Overview

Ellery Littlewood

Research Postgraduate (MRes)

Affiliations
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Research Postgraduate (MRes) in the Department of Geography

Biography

My research centres around the evolving relationship between hand axe-making Lower Paleolithic hominins and the rivers they lived around from MIS 15 - 9 (roughly 600,000 - 300,000 years ago). This is through the investigation of the geology and archaeology from selected sites across Essex, Suffolk, and London, with data coming from a combination of published sources, museum collections, and field work. My interest isn't just what evidence there is and what it tells us, but why any of us should care about it - a theme that often carries through in my teaching undergraduates. As an off-shoot of my research, I'm also passionate about lithic illustration and using it to better understand both individual artefacts and, by extention, entire assemblages. This has led to illustrating for both academic publication and private collectors.

My background is as a Physcial Geographer - having completed my undergraduate degree at Durham University in 2020 - and artist. My current artistic practice predominanty focusses on lithic illustration, however this is a continuation of a larger long-term theme on form in the natural world. This has evolved from botanical painting and illustration to encompass looser illustrative styles as well as lino printing, mixed media pieces, still life, and work with watercolour and acrylic mediums. These are often as stand-alone pieces, but have also been painting series and installations.

Three hand axes from varying views, taken from Allen et al. (2022)

Research interests

  • Lower Palaeolithic archaeology
  • Lithic illustration
  • Middle Pleistocene landscape and environmental change
  • River terrace formation and evolution