Chantal Conneller

Chantal Conneller FSA (b.1973) is an archaeologist and Professor of Early Prehistory at the University of Newcastle.

Biography

Conneller has a BA and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Her 2002 PhD thesis was titled "Space, time and technology: the Early Mesolithic of the Vale of Pickering, North Yorkshire".^[1]

Conneller was lecturer in Prehistoric Archaeology at Bangor University in 2005 before taking up a position as senior lecturer later that year at the University of Manchester. From 2006-2009 she was director of the Prehistoric Society.^[2] Conneller was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 10 October 2016.^[3]

Conneller became Professor of Early Prehistory at Newcastle University in 2018.^[4]

Conneller's research focusses on the Mesolithic period. She has excavated at various Mesolithic settlements in Britain, including in the Vale of Pickering and at Star Carr, where she co-directed excavations^[5] and the Ice Age Island project at Les Varines, Jersey.^[6] She has appeared on Digging for Britain in 2011, and In Our Time episode on cave art.^[7]

In 2025 she was awarded the British Academy Grahame Clark Medal for her contributions to understanding of the Mesolithic period.^[8]

Select publications

• Conneller, C. 2022. The Mesolithic in Britain: Landscape and Society in Times of Change. London: Routledge.
• Conneller, C. 2022. "The view at the end of the Palaeolithic world". Nature: Ecology and Evolution 6, 1591–1592.
• Elliott, B. and Conneller, C. "Masks in context: representation, emergence, motility and self". World Archaeology 52(5), 655–666.
• Burns, A., Woodward, J., Conneller, C., Reimer, P. 2022. "Footprint beds record Holocene decline in large mammal diversity on the Irish Sea coast of Britain". Nature: Ecology and Evolution 6, 1553–1563.
• Bates, J., Needham, A., Conneller, C., Milner, N., Pomstra, D., Little, A. 2022. "Flint awls at the Mesolithic site of Star Carr: Understanding tool use through integrated methods". Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 43, 103478.
• Milner N., Conneller, C., and Taylor, B. (eds) 2018. Star Carr. Volume 1: A Persistent Place in a Changing World; Star Carr: Volume 2: Studies in Technology, Subsistence and Environment. York: White Rose Press.
• Conneller, C., and Warren, G. (eds). Mesolithic Britain and Ireland: New Approaches. Stroud: Tempus.