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Dr Richard Jennings

School of Biological and Environmental Sciences

Faculty of Science

Email: R.P.Jennings@ljmu.ac.uk

Telephone: 0151 231 2421

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ORCID

I first studied archaeology at the University of Auckland (BA in Anthropology and Near Eastern History; MA in GIS Applications). My interest in Palaeolithic Archaeology was sparked by excavating for two seasons at the Middle Pleistocene site of Boxgrove, UK, and then on the Gorham’s Cave Project, Gibraltar, where we undertook fieldwork on late Neanderthal deposits. Arising from this I was awarded an AHRC studentship in 2002 under Professors Barton, Finlayson and Stringer at the University of Oxford, where I developed GIS and climate models to explore Middle and Upper Palaeolithic sites distributions in southern Iberia, undertook excavations at Higueral de Valleja Cave in Cadiz Province, Spain, and worked at Taforalt Cave and Dar Es Sultan Middle-Late Stone Age sites in North Africa for six months. On completion of my doctorate in 2008 I spent two years gaining valuable experience as a site director excavating numerous prehistoric and later sites in Ireland and further developed my GIS skills in landscape characterisation studies of the River Nore and Kilkenny City.

I was appointed Lecturer in Archaeology at University College Cork in 2011. When I was there I undertook fieldwork in the Caucasus Mountains excavating Neanderthal sites with Prof. Pinhasi. In 2013 I returned to the University of Oxford as a postdoctoral researcher on the Palaeodeserts project with Prof. Petraglia, which involved six months of fieldwork in the Arabian Peninsula on Middle-Late Pleistocene and Holocene archaeological sites, and the examination of site distributions in the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa using GIS and climate models. In 2015 I undertook a second postdoctorate on the Endangered Archaeology of the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project, where I was responsible for the design of the database using the Arches platform.

I was appointed Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at Liverpool John Moores University in 2016 and was promoted to Reader/Associate Professor in 2021. Gibraltar remains a central part of my research and teaching activities. I am an excavation director on the Gorham’s Cave Project and bring students from LJMU for accredited training in archaeological field survey methods and excavation techniques. My knowledge of spatial databases has enabled a further collaboration to develop between the Gibraltar National Museum and LJMU whereby we are in the process of designing a heritage database for Gibraltar using Arches, beginning with its World Heritage Site. Elsewhere, I have two projects funded by the Royal Irish Academy to excavated Late Pleistocene deposits at Ballynamintra Cave and at Castlepook Cave in the south of Ireland, where we are searching for definitive evidence for people in Ireland during the last ice age. I am also applying climate models to explore the environment of Shanidar Cave, Iraqi Kurdistan.

Languages

Spanish; Castilian

Degrees

2008, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, D. Phil.
1995, Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland, New Zealand, MA
1995, Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland, Auckland, MA
1992, Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland, New Zealand, BA

Academic appointments

Reader in Archaeology, School of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, 2021 - present
Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, School of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, 2016 - 2021
Postdoctoral Researcher, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 2013 - 2016
Lecturer in Archaeology, Department of Archaeology, University College Cork, 2011 - 2013
Lecturer in Archaeology, Department of Anthropology and Geography, Oxford Brookes University, 2010 - 2011
Lecturer in Archaeology, Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxford, 2010 - 2011

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