Gerrit Dusseldorp is an expert on the behaviour of Pleistocene hunter-gatherers both in Northwest Europe and South Africa.

More information about Gerrit Dusseldorp

Background

Gerrit Dusseldorp is an expert on the behaviour of Pleistocene hunter-gatherers both in Northwest Europe and South Africa. He completed a PhD at Leiden University (2009) on Neanderthal subsistence economies. He also studied the ecological relationships between Neanderthals and other Ice Age carnivores such as Cave hyenas. After completing his PhD he pursued his post-doctoral research in South Africa at the University of the Witwatersrand (2009 – 2012) and subsequently the University of Johannesburg (2013 – 2016).

Research

Gerrit’s research is primarily on the development of characteristically modern human behaviour in southern Africa during the past 100 000 years. He has published extensively on the palaeoecological setting of human occupations at key sites such as Blombos Cave and Klasies River. He has also analysed the development of technology and subsistence behaviour throughout the Middle Stone Age. Gerrit is currently setting up a fieldwork project in KwaZulu-Natal aimed at illuminating the transition from the Middle Stone Age to the Later Stone Age (~40 – 20 000 years ago) and on the influence of the Last Glacial Maximum on hunter-gatherer subsistence economies.

Another area of interest is the transition from hunter-gatherers to food producers. Gerrit has studied the transition to farming in the Low countries and has also worked on the introduction of livestock and in southern African hunter-gatherer societies and the development of pastoralism.

He is also involved in debates on the protection of archaeological heritage in the Netherlands and has published research on the implications of the introduction of the Heritage Law in July 2016.