Peter Mitchell
Biographic Data
| ID | 99045 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter Mitchell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter |
| FAMILY NAME | Mitchell |
| SIGNATURE | MITCHELL P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3112-3578 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 155 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 652 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 156 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1904 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Multi-scalar Analysis of a Southern African Assemblage
This study describes a Middle Stone Age (MSA) assemblage from Ha Makotoko, Lesotho. Excavated in 2010, the assemblage dates to > 42 ka and falls within Marine Isotope Stage 3. Faunal remains indicate a grassland environment during the time of occupation. The lithic artefacts found at Ha Makotoko comprise a predominantly flake-based industry with some blades and an increasing frequency of bladelets throughout the sequence. Artefacts were primarily…
Heat Wave Beliefs and Behaviors in Southern Spain
Extreme heat is a pressing public health threat. This study assesses and describes the interrelationships between beliefs about heat waves, individuals' precautionary behaviors during heat waves, and demographic factors. In May 2022, we surveyed 1051 residents (aged 25-90 years) in Southern Spain, a region that experiences frequent heat waves. We found that many participants engaged in heat wave avoidance (80.5%, e.g., spending more time indoors)…
The Archaeology of Southern Africa
Some of humanity's earliest ancestors lived in southern Africa and evidence from sites there has inspired key debates on human origins and the emergence of complex cognition. Building on its rich rock art heritage, archaeologists have developed theoretical work that continues to influence rock art studies worldwide, with the relationship between archaeological and anthropological data central to understanding past hunter-gatherer, pastoralist, an…
Archaeology of Southern Africa
Archaeological science in Africa
A zooarchaeological perspective on late pleistocene/early holocene human behaviour in the Maloti-Drakensberg region, southern Africa
Re-excavation of Ha Makotoko and Ntloana Tšoana rock-shelters in western Lesotho, produced abundant faunal remains (both macro and micro) from people using the Robberg technocomplex during the late Pleistocene (Ha Makotoko and Ntloana Tšoana (15.4–13.4 kcal. BP) and early Holocene (Ntloana Tšoana 11.1–10.2 kcal. BP). This faunal material allows us to identify the subsistence strategies they employed, using the unbiased Simpson's evenness index (1…
Making connections
Ostriches are peculiar birds and their strangeness has been recognised by southern African hunter-gatherers through multiple symbolic associations. Such qualities are likely to have been enhanced where people had access to beads made from their eggshell but did not have direct knowledge of the birds themselves. Southeastern southern Africa, encompassing the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains, the eastern half of the Eastern Cape Province and much of Kw…
Spatial and temporal trends in the distribution of engraved eggshell fragments
Monitoring benthic habitats in English Marine Protected Areas
Thousands of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have been designated around the globe to conserve benthic habitats, following the adoption of Convention on Biodiversity Aichi Target 11 and widespread endorsement of the ‘30by30’ initiative. When designed and managed effectively, MPAs can enrich biodiversity, enhance ecosystem services and regulate stakeholder access. High quality dedicated monitoring programmes are essential to determine MPA effectiven…
Archaeological Research in the Canary Islands
Island archaeology is a well-established field within the wider discipline, but African contributions to it remain scarce. The Canary Islands are unusual in the broader African context for their relatively long history of occupation (~2000 years) and the intensity with which archaeological research has been, and is, undertaken there. Much of that research, however, has focused on specifically Canarian issues, including efforts to demonstrate conn…
Raw Material Surveys and Their Behavioral Implications in Highland Lesotho
Archaeologists have long considered climate change a primary mechanism behind human behavioral adaptations. The Lesotho highlands’ Afromontane and climatically extreme environments offer a unique opportunity to examine proposed correlations between topography, climate, and human behavior. Previous studies suggest that warmer temperatures allowed humans to expand their diet breadth and foraging range, whereas colder temperatures restricted humans …
Hafting adhesives from the final Later Stone Age layers at Sehonghong, Lesotho
There is longstanding evidence in the archaeological record of southern Africa for the application of hafting adhesives in the production of composite tool technology. Despite the limitations in the preservation of organics in archaeological contexts, the preservation of these materials can inform us about aspects of technological production and function, including hafting arrangements, adhesive production and resource acquisition. In some instan…
David Phillipson
La importación del modelo think tank en Colombia
El artículo examina la construcción institucional de la Fundación para la Educación Superior y el Desarrollo (Fedesarrollo) en Colombia durante la década del 70. Este caso específico posibilita el estudio analítico de cómo el modelo de think tank estadounidense fue importado por un centro académico colombiano y cómo la Fundación Ford cumplió un rol fundamental a la hora de exportar este tipo de institución con sus donaciones y asistencia bajo un …
African Islands
“Speak of the Devil… and he Shall Appear”
African Islands
Colonizing and resisting
Moshebi's shelter at fifty
Characterization and dating of San rock art in the Metolong catchment, Lesotho
The Rock Arts of Metolong
Archaeological mitigation efforts in advance of Lesotho’s Metolong Dam involved comprehensive documentation of rock paintings in the area threatened with inundation, as well as pigment characterisation and direct dating. This paper gives an overview of the rock arts found and their key features. Four traditions are present. Most paintings belong to the fine-line San tradition, but there are also examples of Type 3 images previously only recognise…
Ruling the World
Ruling the World tells the story of how the largest and most diverse empire in history was governed, everywhere and all at once. Focusing on some of the most tumultuous years of Queen Victoria's reign, Alan Lester, Kate Boehme and Peter Mitchell adopt an entirely new perspective to explain how the men in charge of the British Empire sought to manage simultaneous events across the globe. Using case studies including Canada, South Africa, the Carib…
Record-Making, Research, and Removal
This paper reports on the steps taken to mitigate the impact of the Metolong Dam (Lesotho) on the rock art present within the catchment of its associated reservoir. Mitigation took four major forms: comprehensive survey and documentation, including both photography and tracing; pigment characterization and radiocarbon dating; exploration of the ongoing significance of rock art as a form of living heritage for people living in the vicinity; and re…
Here be dragons
Africa has thus far contributed little to debates in the field of island archaeology. This paper explores the potential of São Tomé and Príncipe, a small island state in the Gulf of Guinea that may be the only country in the world where no archaeological fieldwork has yet been undertaken. This contrasts sharply with its importance as a focal point in the development of plantation economies based on unfree labour, campaigns of resistance to these,…
Handbook of Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa
The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology
LIST OF FIGURES LIST OF TABLES LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS PART 1: INTRODUCTION PART II: DOING AFRICAN ARCHAEOLOGY: THEORY, METHOD, PRACTICE PART III: BECOMING HUMAN PART IV: HUNTERS, GATHERERS, AND INTENSIFIERS: THE DIVERSITY OF AFRICAN FORAGERS PART V: FOOD FOR THOUGHT: THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF AFRICAN PASTORALIST AND FARMING COMMUNITIES PART VI: POWER, PRESTIGE, AND CONSUMPTION: AFRICAN TOWNS AND STATES AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS PART VII: AFRICAN SOCIETIES AND …
Prehistoric exchange and interaction in southeastern southern africa
New ages from Sehonghong rock shelter
New ages from Boomplaas Cave, South Africa, provide increased resolution on late/terminal Pleistocene human behavioural variability
Boomplaas Cave, South Africa, contains a rich archaeological record, with evidence of human occupation from >66,000 years ago until the protohistoric period. Notwithstanding a long history of research at the site, its existing chronology can benefit from revision. Many of the site’s members are currently delimited by only a single conventional radiocarbon date and some of the existing dates were measured on materials now known to be unsuitable fo…
The late Pleistocene early microlithic assemblages of southern Africa
Results of a review of the early microlithic assemblages of southern Africa are discussed. Particular attention is given to the recognition of two geographic provinces, defined in terms of raw material availability and flaking technology, and to the palaeoecological implications of site distribution. Explanations are offered for the technological transitions between the Middle and Later Stone Ages, and between the Robberg and Albany Industries of…
The late Quaternary of the Lesotho highlands, southern Africa
The Organization of Later Stone Age Lithic Technology in the Caledon Valley, Southern Africa
Late Pleistocene human occupation in the Maloti-Drakensberg region of southern Africa
Primordialism and the 'Pleistocene San' of southern Africa
Settling Madagascar
Madagascar poses a significant challenge for understanding how people colonized islands. While its inhabitants also share an African ancestry, language, genetics, and culture all point to the arrival on the island of Austronesian-speaking settlers from the far side of the Indian Ocean. Recent decades have seen increasing acceptance of a late first-millennium BC date for Madagascar’s initial settlement, based principally on arguments relating to t…
Revisiting the Robberg
An early date for cattle from Namaqualand, South Africa
When did cattle come to South Africa? Radiocarbon dates on a newly found cow horn indicates a time in the early first millennium AD. In a study of the likely context for the advent of cattle herding, the authors favour immigrants moving along a western route through Namibia
The first archaeological evidence for death by spearing in Australia
An Aboriginal man done to death on the dunes 4000 years ago was recently discovered during excavations beneath a bus shelter in Narrabeen on Sydney's northern beaches. The presence of backed microliths and the evidence for trauma in the bones showed that he had been killed with stone-tipped spears. Now we know how these backed points were used. A punishment ritual is implied by analogies with contact-period observations made in the eighteenth cen…
The earliest directly dated rock paintings from southern Africa
An archaeological radiocarbon database for southern Africa
Late Holocene fishing strategies in southern Africa as seen from Likoaeng, highland Lesotho
Children's ability to infer utterance veracity from speaker informedness
Children between the ages of 3 years 7 months and 6 years 5 months experienced a contradiction between what they knew or guessed to be inside a box and what they were told by an adult. The authors investigated whether children believed what they were told by asking them to make a final judgment about the box's content. Children tended to believe utterances from speakers who were better informed than they themselves were and to disbelieve those fr…
Ha Makotoko
Stratigraphically extensive sites with good organic preservation that date to the Pleistocene/Holocene transition are rare in southern Africa outside the Fynbos Biome of the Cape. However, the Caledon Valley, which forms Lesotho’s western border with South Africa, boasts an unusual concentration of such sites, especially in its central portion. Archaeological fieldwork ahead of the impoundment of the Metolong Dam provided a renewed — and final — …
Practising archaeology at a time of climatic catastrophe
The term 'catastrophe' in my title is not chosen idly, but reflects the now well-established fact that Earth is experiencing (anthropogenic) climate change at a rate and scale unparalleled in human history (IPCC 2007a). Dramatic events such as the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 are so unexpected that one retains a clear memory of precisely when and where one learned of them. Regrettably, climate change is subtler, its effects slower, its …
The archaeological study of epidemic and infectious disease
2003). The archaeological study of epidemic and infectious disease. World Archaeology: Vol. 35, Archaeology of Epidemic and Infectious Disease, pp. 171-179
Handbook of Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa
The Anthropologist and the Practical Man
In an article entitled ‘Practical Anthropology’, which appeared in Vol. II, No. I of Africa , Professor Malinowski makes suggestions as to the manner in which the anthropologist can be of service to those who are engaged in the practical business of colonial administration, especially in Africa. He writes, it is true, as an anthropologist, and he proposes that the anthropologist shall record the facts and the ‘practical’ man draw his deductions t…
Disease
Although debate continues, there is agreement that dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) were first domesticated in Eurasia, spreading from there to other parts of the world. However, while that expansion already extended as far as Europe, China, and North America by the early Holocene, dogs spread into (and south of) the tropics only much later. In South America, for example, the earliest well-attested instances of their presence do not reach back much …
Chemical evidence of dairying by hunter-gatherers in highland Lesotho in the late first millennium ad
A Terminal Pleistocene Open Site On The Hawkesbury River, Pitt Town, New South Wales
Salvage excavations of 25 m2 on a levee adjacent to the Hawkesbury River near Pitt Town, New South Wales, identified a 1.5 m deep sand body containing three discrete artefact assemblages, collectively designated as site PT12. Six optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ages provide a chronology for the sand body, which began forming >50 ka. Peak artefact numbers for the two lowest assemblages were centred on ca 15 ka and ca 11 ka, and had Caperti…
The Nature of Man
tions to Madeira, Teneriffe and the Kalmuck Steppes in connection with his zoological researches.In 1882, in con- sequence of administrative difficulties, arising as part of the troubles that followed the murder of the Tzar, Alexander II., he resigned the Professorship and became Director of the municipal Bacteriological Laboratory.In 1888 he went to the Pasteur Institute, and has remained
The Anthropologist and the Practical Man
In an article entitled ‘Practical Anthropology’, which appeared in Vol. II, No. I of Africa , Professor Malinowski makes suggestions as to the manner in which the anthropologist can be of service to those who are engaged in the practical business of colonial administration, especially in Africa. He writes, it is true, as an anthropologist, and he proposes that the anthropologist shall record the facts and the ‘practical’ man draw his deductions t…
Exquisite corpse
Review| June 01 1980 Exquisite corpse Peter Mitchell Peter Mitchell Peter Mitchell is a graduate student in photography at the Visual Studies Workshop Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Afterimage (1980) 8 (1-2): 36–37. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.1980.8.1-2.36 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get …
New electronic technology
Other| January 01 1980 New electronic technology: what and for whom Peter Mitchell Peter Mitchell Peter Mitchell is a graduate student in photography at the Visual Studies Workshop. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Afterimage (1980) 7 (6): 16. https://doi.org/10.1525/aft.1980.7.6.16a Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter Linke…
Caps Video
Other| December 01 1980 Caps Video Janis Croft-williams, Janis Croft-williams Janis Croft-williams is a graduate students in photography and video at the Visual Studies Workshop. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Peter Mitchell, Peter Mitchell Peter Mitchell is a graduate students in photography and video at the Visual Studies Workshop. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Schol…
The late Pleistocene early microlithic assemblages of southern Africa
Results of a review of the early microlithic assemblages of southern Africa are discussed. Particular attention is given to the recognition of two geographic provinces, defined in terms of raw material availability and flaking technology, and to the palaeoecological implications of site distribution. Explanations are offered for the technological transitions between the Middle and Later Stone Ages, and between the Robberg and Albany Industries of…
Sehonghong. The Middle and Later Stone Age Sequence at a Lesotho Rock Shelter
Preliminary Report on the Later Stone Age Sequence from Tloutle Rock Shelter, Western Lesotho
Children's understanding of the evidential connotation of ‘know’ in relation to overestimation of their own knowledge
This study examined five- to seven-year-olds' assumptions about the experiential connotation of ‘I know that's X’. In Experiment 1 children tried to identify which of a set of unfamiliar targets had a given name (X), and after they had chosen, we enquired either whether they KNEW their chosen item was (X) or whether they were SURE. Six- to seven-year-olds ( N = 39) judged that they were sure more often than they judged that they knew, which sugge…
Archaeological research in Lesotho
Ntloana Tsoana
Partnerships Between the Independent Sector and the Probation Service
This article examines the concept, strongly promoted in recent Home Office policy, of partnerships between the probation service and the independent sector. Its aim is to discuss the implications of this concept for probation policy and practice. It is argued first that current debates have tended to lose sight of a long tradition of joint work between the service and the voluntary sector, and examples are given of past partnerships' which may he…
Archaeological Investigations at two Lesotho Rock-shelters
Results of the excavation of two rock-shelters in the Phuthiatsana-ea-Thaba Bosiu Basin of western Lesotho, southern Africa are reported. Later Stone Age occupation at both sites was principally a feature of the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene. Analysis of the artefact assemblages shows that, while all in situ occurrences belong to the Oakhurst Industrial Complex, significant differences are apparent between those pre- and post-dating 750…
Recent Holocene Archaeology in Western and Southern Lesotho
Young children's false-belief reasoning
E. J. Robinson and P. Mitchell (1992) devised a message-desire discrepant task in which a speaker gives a message based on a false belief. A correct nonliteral interpretation of the message requires taking into account this false belief, which children were more likely to achieve in this task than in a classic prediction task. In 2 studies reported here, we repeated the comparison using more closely matched tasks. The message-desire discrepant ta…
The archaeology of the Phuthiatsana-ea-Thaba Bosiu Basin, Lesotho, southern Africa
Field survey of an unexplored zone of southern Africa enlarges and develops knowledge of the region's prehistory
Young children's treating of utterances as unreliable sources of knowledge
In two investigations ( N = 62 and 59), three- and four-year-old children sometimes disbelieved what they were told about the unexpected contents of a deceptive box, even when they had seen the adult speaker look inside the box before s/he told them what s/he saw, and despite being able to recall the utterance: utterances were treated as unreliable sources of knowledge compared with seeing directly. Those who did believe the utterance were no bet…
Revisiting the Robberg
At the Transition
Academic Values and the Study of Religions
Sehonghong
The late Quaternary of the Lesotho highlands, southern Africa
Prehistoric exchange and interaction in southeastern southern africa
The late Quaternary landscape at Sehonghong in the Lesotho highlands, southern Africa
In the rough and rugged country of the Lesotho highlands, rock-paintings and archaeological deposits in the rock-shelters record hunter-gatherer life-ways; at Sehonghong, a long sequence runs from recent times to and through the Last Glacial Maximum. Survey of the region's Middle and Later Stone Age sites shows a pattern of concentrations that likely applies to other parts of the Lesotho highlands
Holocene later stone age hunter-gatherers south of the Limpopo River, Ca. 10,000-2000 B.P
Archaeology (102 works) · Geography (101 works) · History (75 works) · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies (67 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (56 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (49 works) · History (37 works) · Geology (33 works) · Sociology (24 works) · Biology (22 works)