Professor Lyn Wadley
Professor Lyn Wadley obtained her master’s in archaeology from the University of Cape Town and her PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). She spent much of her academic career (1982-2004) lecturing at Wits. In 2005, she was appointed an honorary professor, and is now based in the Evolutionary Studies Institute at Wits, where she specialises in Middle Stone Age cognitive archaeology.
An A-rated NRF researcher, Wadley won a TW Kambule award at the BHP Billiton-National Science and Technology Forum awards in 2014. In 2014 and 2015 she received certificates from Thomson-Reuters for “exceptional impact”, and was placed on the high citation list for the top 1% of researchers globally. This recognition implies that her work is valued not only by archaeologists, but also by researchers in other disciplines.
She developed theories and methods for linking ancient human mental abilities and technologies as part of her research into cognitive archaeology. A global leader in this field, she was the first archaeologist to demonstrate that some Stone Age technologies could be used as proxies to demonstrate complex brain power more than 100 000 years ago. This research involved the excavation of Rose Cottage Cave in the Free State and Sibudu Cave in KwaZulu-Natal.
Wadley undertook innovative experimental work, which included replicating Stone Age compound adhesives and using chemical and mechanical tests to assess their properties. Drawing on principles from cognitive science, she discovered that adhesive-making technology, together with some other Stone Age technologies, required a suite of complex mental attributes.
Her multidisciplinary, collaborative work places the archaeological interpretation of cognition firmly within the realm of testable science. Her evidence that the attributes of complex cognition (needed by people like ourselves) were present here before they were recognisable elsewhere in the world, shows the pivotal role that Africa and her early inhabitants played in the subsequent peopling of continents outside Africa.
A committed educationalist, Wadley has paid particular attention to the development of women students. Relatively few students pursue postgraduate degrees in Archaeology, but 17 master’s and 15 PhD students were awarded their degrees under her supervision, and she is supervising three more PhD students. She is also involved in a number of outreach programmes for disadvantaged students, and has taught evening classes in adult literacy for six years.
Wadley has produced 51 peer-reviewed journal papers and 14 book chapters in the past 10 years. Some of her papers are in top-ranked journals such as Science and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the USA. She presents lectures at international conferences and symposia, serves on the editorial boards of South African and international journals and conducts many peer reviews. Wadley belongs to professional associations such as the Academy of Science of South Africa, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa.