Associate Professor John J. Shea
Ph.D., Harvard University, 1991
Contact Information:
Associate Professor
Anthropology Department
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794-4364
Tel: 631-632-7665 (office), 631-632-1321(lab)
email: John.Shea@sunysb.edu
Research Interests:
John Shea's research interests focus on the archaeology of Pleistocene humans in the Near East and Africa. He is particularly interested in human adaptive radiation through the East Mediterranean Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Israel & Jordan). His methodological area of expertise is lithic analysis, and much of his research focuses on extracting behavioral information from stone tools. Professor Shea is also an expert flintknapper who has given numerous demonstrations of stone-tool-making techniques in university classes, public lectures and television documentaries.
Many of John Shea's recent publications focus on the Middle Paleolithic period in the Levant (47,000-250,000 BP), a time when this region was occupied by Neandertals and early modern humans. Shea's research argues that Neandertals and early modern humans were different species who competed with each other for the same "human niche" in the Levant.
In the 1990s, Prof. Shea co-directed archaeological excavations at the Early Pleistocene site of 'Ubeidiya, in the Jordan Valley, Israel. These excavations recovered Early Acheulian stone tools and faunal remains from lake-edge contexts dating to about 1.4 Million years ago. The results of this excavation are currently being prepared for publication.
Most recently, John Shea has been investigating Middle Stone Age sites near the Lower Omo River Kibish Formation, in southwestern Ethiopia. This research project has recovered early human fossils and stone tool assemblages from contexts dating to 100,000-200,000 BP. His most recent project will investigate Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene hunter-gatherer adaptations in West Turkana, Kenya.
