Credentials
Academic positions and qualifications
Trained in archaeology, Rebecca’s academic career has included a PhD on British Neanderthals, a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Bordeaux. She is now Honorary Research Associate at the University of Cambridge and Honorary Fellow at the University of Liverpool.
Research Interests
While her first excavation was at Fishbourne Roman Palace (for work experience, aged 14), Rebecca's training in archaeology focused on prehistory. She has worked on many intersecting research themes, including cognition, materiality, landscape and memory, and has particular expertise in the Neanderthals, though her interests span all of prehistory and also reach into later periods in archaeology.
In recent years Rebecca developed research in the history of science, particularly connections between prehistory and women scholars, and changing public/cultural perceptions of Neanderthals and other hominins.
She is currently developing new collaborations at Cambridge which meld her literary and archaeological interests, including a 're-excavation' of the archives of pioneering prehistorian, Professor Dorothy Garrod.
Academic Credentials
2023– present
Honorary Research Associate, University of Cambridge
2022
Lindqvist Lecturer, Uppsala University, Sweden (invited annual lecture)
2020– present
Honorary Fellowship, University of Liverpool
2018
Invited member of Anthropology Working Group for Breakthrough Listen project
2016-18
Fellow of Society of Antiquities
2013-2015
Université de Bordeaux, Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship
Excavation of silcrete quarry site
2013-11
University of Manchester, Honorary Research Fellow
2005-2012
Various seminars, invited lectures at Universities of Bristol, Derby, Chester, Sheffield.
Qualifications
PhD, University of Sheffield, 2010
MA Archaeology of Human Origins, University of Southampton, 2004
BA Archaeology, University of Bristol, 2003
Recent Academic Publications
Pyne, L. and Wragg Sykes, R.M. 2025. Shadows in the Mirror: A Discussion on Understanding Human Ancestors. In (Manias, C.; Cain, J. eds.). Palaeontology in Public: Popular Science, Lost Creatures and Deep Time. UCL Press.
Wragg Sykes, R.M. 2024. Coalescence and Transcendence: Implications from the Emergence of Adhesives and Composite Technologies. In Thomas Wynn, Karenleigh A. Overmann, and Frederick L. Coolidge (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology. Oxford Academic
Wragg Sykes, R.M. 2023. Were Neanderthals soulful inventors or strange cannibals? The Naked Neanderthal, by Ludovic Slimak (book review). Nature: 624, 247-248.
Hassett, B., Herridge, V.L., Wragg Sykes, R.M., Pilaar Birch, S.E. 2023. No Pay, Low Pay, and Unequal Pay: The TrowelBlazers Perspective on the History of Women in Archaeology. In: López Varela, S.L. (eds) Women in Archaeology. Women in Engineering and Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27650-7_19
Romagnoli, F. Chabai, F.V., Gravina, B., Hérisson, D., Hovers, E., Moncel, M.H., Peresani, M., Uthmeier, T., Bourguignon, L., Gema Chacón, M., Di Modica, K., Faivre, J.-P., Kolobova, K., Malinsky-Buller, A., Neruda, P., Garaizar, J. R., Weiss, M., Wiśniewski, A. Wragg Sykes, R.M. 2022. Neanderthal technological variability: A wide-ranging geographical perspective on the final Middle Palaeolithic. In Updating Neanderthals, Editor(s): Francesca Romagnoli, Florent Rivals, Stefano Benazzi. Academic Press, pp 163-205.
Nelson, E., Kubicka, A., Nowell, A. and Wragg Sykes, R. 2022. Sexual Behaviour In Neanderthals. In T. K. Shackelford (Ed.). The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Sexual Psychology. Cambridge University Press.
Wragg Sykes, R.M. 2020. The Transatlantic Slave Economy and Wales’s Built Environment: A Research Audit for The National Trust. Audit Two: Mid-Wales. Covering Powys, the Brecon Beacons and the Cambrian mountains (unpublished report).
Hassett, B., Herridge, V., Pilaar Birch, S. and Wragg Sykes, R.M. 2019. Activism from the Archives: Changing Narratives to Engage New Audiences. In: Jameson, J. H. and Musteaţă, S. (eds) Transforming Heritage Practice in the 21st century. Springer.
Hassett, B., Herridge, V., Wragg Sykes, R.M. and Pilaar Birch, S. 2018. TrowelBlazers: Accidentally crowdsourcing an archive of women in archaeology, In: Apaydin, V. and Johnston, J. (eds) Increasing Heritage Awareness through Participatory Public Archaeology. Springer.
Delvigne, V., Fernandes, P., Piboule, M., Bindon, P., Chomette, D., Defive, E., Lafarge, A., Liabeuf, R., Moncel, M.H., Vaissié E., Wragg Sykes, R.M., Raynal, J. P. 2019. Barremian–Bedoulian flint humanly transported from the west bank of the Rhône to the Massif-Central Highlands–A diachronic perspective. Comptes Rendus Palevol 18 (1), 90–112.
Hassett B., Herridge V.L., Wragg Sykes R.M., Pilaar Birch S. 2019. Activism from the Archives: Changing Narratives to Engage New Communities, In: Jameson J., Musteaţă S. (eds) Transforming Heritage Practice in the 21st Century. One World Archaeology. Springer.
Wragg Sykes, R.M. 2018. Picken’s Hole, Crook Peak, Somerset: A description of the lithic collection and its probable Late Middle Palaeolithic context. Proceedings of the University of Bristol Spelaeological Society. 27 (3): 315–338.
Hassett, B., Herridge, V., Wragg Sykes, R.M. and Pilaar Birch, S. 2018. TrowelBlazers: Accidentally crowdsourcing an archive of women in archaeology, In: Apaydin, V. and Johnston, J. (eds) Increasing Heritage Awareness through Participatory Public Archaeology. Springer.
Wragg-Sykes, R.M., Delvigne, V., Fernandes, P., Piboule, M., Lafarge, A., Defive, E., Raynal, J.P., 2017. “Undatable, unattractive, redundant”? The Rapavi silcrete source, Saint-Pierre-Eynac (Haute-Loire, France): challenges studying a prehistoric quarry-workshop in the Massif Central mountains. Journal of Archaeological Science Reports 15: 587–610
Wragg Sykes, R.M. and Will, Manuel. 2017. Guest Editorial – Silcrete as a lithic raw material in global context: geology, sourcing and prehistoric techno-economics. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 15: 492–499
Wragg Sykes, R.M. 2017. Isolation, Exploration or Seasonal Migration? Investigating technological organisation in the Late Middle Palaeolithic of Britain during Marine Isotope Stage 3. In Lithic Technological Organization and Paleoenvironmental Change. (Eds. E. N. Robinson, F. Sellet). Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation. Springer.
Wragg Sykes, R.M. 2017. Neanderthals in the Outermost West: technological adaptation in the Late Middle Palaeolithic (re)-colonization of Britain, Marine Isotope Stage 4/3. Quaternary International 433: 4–32
Delvigne, V., Fernandes, P., Piboule, M., Chomette, D., Defive, E., Lafarge, A., Liabeuf, R., Moncel, M-H., Wragg Sykes, R., Raynal, J.P. 2016. Circulation du silex barrémo-bédoulien depuis le Paléolithique moyen de Vivarais en Velay par les monts du Mézenc. Ardèche Archéologie 33, 11-18
Ruebens, K and Wragg Sykes, R.M. 2016. Spatio-temporal variation in Late Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthal behaviour: British bout coupé handaxes as a case study. Quaternary International 411: 305–326
Wragg Sykes, R.M., Riel-Salvatore, J., Pilaar Birch, S. 2015. Reconstructing hunter-gatherer mobility: building new inter disciplinary frameworks in the Quaternary- 1502P. Quaternary Perspectives 22 (1): 9.
Wragg Sykes, R.M. 2015. To see a world in a hafted tool: birch pitch composite technology, cognition and memory in Neanderthals. In Settlement, Society and Cognition in Human Evolution: Landscapes in the Mind. (Eds F. Coward, R. Hosfield, M. Pope, F. Wenban-Smith). Cambridge University Press