Brian Stewart

Brian A. Stewart is an anthropological archaeologist, assistant professor of anthropology, and curator of Paleolithic archaeology at the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology. He is also an honorary research fellow at the Rock Art Institute of the University of the Witwatersrand. His research focuses primarily on prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies of Africa, especially southern Africa. He is particularly interested in determining when, how, and where humans developed adaptive plasticity. Brian Stewart has directed excavations of many sites, mostly in Lesotho and South Africa, among the most notable are Spitzkloof, Sehonghong, and Melikane. Education Brian Stewart received a Bachelors of Arts in Anthropology in 2000 from the University of Vermont. He went on to receive his M.St. with high distinction in 2001 and his Ph.D in 2008 from the University of Oxford. He completed his dissertation under the mentorship of Dr. Peter Mitchell, focused on a spatial analysis of the Late Stone Age campsite of Dunefield Midden in South Africa. After receiving his doctorate, Stewart was a Junior Research Fellow (2008-2012) and Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2010-2012) at the University of Cambridge. He went on to hold the title of Lecturer at Harvard University (2012-2013) before joining the faculty of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan at the rank of Assistant Professor and becoming Curator of Paleolithic Archaeology at the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology. Research Brian Stewart's research investigates the behavior plasticity of Stone Age people, focused primarily in southern Africa. Coastal-based research in southern Africa over the last few decades have brought much attention to this record, as archaeologists have documented diverse materials signatures of symbolic behaviors (beads, ochres, incised ostrich egg shells, etc.) dating to ~80,000 years ago. Before this, symbolic behavior, though considered a hallmark of modern humans, was thought to have emerged as humans entered the challenging environments of Europe as they spread to that continent ~40,000 years ago.