Projects per year
Personal profile
Research Expertise
Ben started teaching at UHI in September 2021. He is an Early Prehistorian who works on the hunter-gatherer communities of Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Northern Europe.
After completing a BA in Archaeology at the University of York in 2007, he remained in York to study for an MA in Mesolithic Studies in 2008. He then secured AHRC funding to undertake doctoral research on a project entitled Antlerworking practices in Mesolithic Britain, under the supervision of Dr Nicky Milner. This involved the application of traceological analysis to the full corpus of antler artefacts and debitage recovered from Mesolithic sites across Britain. During this time, Ben also took part in the excavation of a series of wetland Mesolithic sites in the Vale of Pickering, including Star Carr.
Following the completion of his PhD in 2012, Ben worked as an archivist for the ERC-funded POSTGLACIAL project, designing archiving and deposition strategies for excavations at Star Carr and Flixton Island that dovetailed with those of the Yorkshire Museum and ADS respectively. During this time he also co-founded the Sonic Horizons of the Mesolithic project; a collaboration with the sound artist Dr Jon Hughes to explore the potential of sound art and acoustic ecology in developing understandings of sonic experiences during the Mesolithic. This led to the development of SoundTracks, a two-year Leverhulme-funded Research Project led by Prof Mark Edmonds in partnership with the British Library and Creswell Crags Heritage Trust. Whilst working part time as a PDRA on SoundTracks from 2015 to 2017, Ben became involved in the Ice Age Island project on Jersey, excavating at the Magdelanian site of Les Varines under the direction of Dr Ed Blinkhorn and Prof Chantal Conneller.
Following this, Ben was awarded a two-year Government of Ireland IRC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to study the axe-making traditions of North West Europe during the 5th millennium cal. BC in 2017. Hosted by University College Dublin and mentored by Prof Graeme Warren, this project involved the analysis of osseous and coarse stone axe production assemblages from sites in Ireland, Norway, Sweden and Northern Germany.
In 2019, Ben moved to Newcastle University to begin a two-year PDRA position on the Leverhulme-funded Masks Unmasked project. Led by Prof Chantal Conneller, this project aimed to examine the evidence for masks and masking within the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic record of Northern Europe, as a continuation of their previous discussion of masks in relation to the modified red deer crania from Star Carr.
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Collaborations from the last five years
Projects
- 1 Finished
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Unmasking Masks: rethinking concepts of personhood in Europe 40,000–4,000 BCE
Conneller, C. & Elliott, B.
1/10/19 → 30/09/22
Project: Research
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Colonialism and the European Mesolithic
Elliott, B. & Warren, G., 23 Mar 2023, In: Norwegian Archaeological Review . p. 1-19 19 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile18 Downloads (Pure) -
Unsettling Sin and Seeding Healing: Developing the Conversation Around Coloniality in the European Mesolithic
Elliott, B. & Warren, G., 22 May 2023, In: Norwegian Archaeological Review .Research output: Contribution to journal › Comment/debate › peer-review
Open Access -
Consumers, not Contributors? The Study of the Mesolithic and the Study of Hunter-Gatherers
Elliott, B. & Warren, G., 24 Oct 2022, In: Open Archaeology. 8, 1, p. 787-795 9 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile1 Citation (Scopus)8 Downloads (Pure) -
Decolonising the Mesolithic?
Elliott, B., Damm, C., Nyland, A., Porr, M., Nilsson Stutz, L. & Warren, G., 28 Feb 2022, In: Mesolithic Miscelleny. 29, 2, p. 59-61 3 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile137 Downloads (Pure) -
Material and Sensory Experiences of Mesolithic Resinous Substances
Elliott, B., Little, A., Needham, A. & Langley, A., 28 Oct 2022, In: Cambridge Archaeological Journal. p. 1-30 30 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile19 Downloads (Pure) -
Clamber of the dead: material ontology and cosmological affect within the hunter-gatherer mortuary traditions of the Eastern Baltic 4000-3000 cal. BC
Elliott, B., Nilsson Stutz, L. & Conneller, C., 11 Nov 2021, In: World Archaeology. 52, 5, p. 707 723 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open Access -
Masks in context: representation, emergence, motility and self
Elliott, B. & Conneller, C., 19 Oct 2020, In: World Archaeology. 52, 5, p. 655-666 11 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open Access3 Citations (Scopus)
Activities
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Masks in Early Prehistory
Benjamin Elliott (Keynote speaker)
1 Mar 2023Activity: Talk / Presentation / Podcast / Webinar › Invited talk
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Decolonising Prehistory
Benjamin Elliott (Invited speaker)
1 Apr 2023Activity: Talk / Presentation / Podcast / Webinar › Invited talk
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A Different Form of Time, A Different Kind of People: critical reflections on the shifting chronologies of the British Mesolithic
Benjamin Elliott (Speaker)
1 Jul 2022Activity: Talk / Presentation / Podcast / Webinar › Oral presentation
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Vivian Walker
Benjamin Elliott (Host)
28 Oct 2022 → 2 Nov 2022Activity: Hosting a visitor › Hosting an academic visitor
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The Ethics of Analogy
Benjamin Elliott (Speaker)
30 Jun 2022Activity: Talk / Presentation / Podcast / Webinar › Oral presentation
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A Sticky Subject: Towards a more holistic understanding of plant-based adhesives in the European Mesolithic
Benjamin Elliott (Speaker)
30 Jun 2022Activity: Talk / Presentation / Podcast / Webinar › Oral presentation
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Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies
Benjamin Elliott (Participant)
27 Jun 2022 → 1 Jul 2022Activity: Participating in or organising an event › Participation in conference