Steven MithenSteven Mithen is Professor of Early Prehistory and Pro-Vice Chancellor for International and External Affairs at the University of Reading. Having originally studied at the Slade School for Fine Art, he has a BA degree in Archaeology (Sheffield Univesity), an MSc in Biological Computation (York University) and a PhD in Archaeology (Cambridge University). He was appointed a lecturer at the University of Reading in 1992, where he has since served as Head of the School of Human and Environmental Sciences (2003–2008) and Dean of the Faculty of Science (2008–2010) prior to his present appointment as a Pro Vice Chancellor. He directs archaeological fieldwork projects in Western Scotland, where he is attempting to reconstruct Mesolithic settlement patterns, and in southern Jordan where he is excavating the early Neolithic village of WF16 in Wadi Faynan. In addition to such archaeological research, he has sought to develop interdisciplinary approaches to the past by integrating archaeology with theories and methods from the environmental and cognitive sciences. He is the author of several books including The Prehistory of the Mind (1996), After the Ice (2003), The Singing Neanderthals (2005) and To the Islands (2010), and editor of The Early Prehistory of Wadi Faynan (2007, with Bill Finlayson) and Hunter-Gatherer Landscape Archaeology (2000). Steven Mithen was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2003. Read More Read Less