The Hawke’s Bay Branch of the Royal Society is delighted to be included in the Allan Wilson Centre’s 2015 International Lecture Series.

BOOKINGS:
To ensure a seat, go to:
www.allanwilsoncentre.ac.nz click ‘Register Online’ under ‘Events’.

Tom Higham will discuss the period from 60,000 to 30,000 years ago, which saw the final dispersal of moderns out of Africa, colonising the Old World and Australia, and the disappearance of Neanderthals from the areas they had occupied for 200,000 years. We now know through ancient DNA research that ancient modern humans and Neanderthals probably interbred prior to the wider dispersal of modern people.

Tom is the Deputy Director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, administers the Unit’s archaeological dating programmes and is secretary to the NERC – AHRC National Radiocarbon Facility advisory panel.

His research interests revolve around archaeological dating using AMS, radiocarbon AMS dating of bone, the chronology of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic of Europe, reservoir effects in 14C, the application of Bayesian calibration methods to archaeological dating, dating novel sample types and sample pretreatment chemistry.