Senior lecturer in Palaeolithic archaeology at the University of Sheffield, Paul Pettitt has focused his research on the European Middle and Upper Palaeolithic. He has studied, in particular, Neanderthal lithic technology from cave sites in southwest France, Late Glacial demography, cave and portable art, and the origins of burial and other mortuary activity, as well as prehistoric chronometry. A graduate of the University of Birmingham where he took first-class honors in ancient history and archaeology, Dr. Pettitt earned a M.A. in archaeology with distinction at University College London, and, in 1999, a Ph.D. in archaeology at Cambridge University. He served for six years as senior archaeologist in the Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at Oxford University, and during that time he was also a Douglas Price Junior Research Fellow at Keble College, Oxford, as well as a research fellow and tutor in archaeology and anthropology. He accepted his present appointment at Sheffield in 2003. A former editor of Lithics and advisory editor of Antiquity, he is an associate editor of Before Farming and the Journal of World Prehistory. He has published more than one hundred papers in academic journals or in volumes of collected works and is completing The Palaeolithic Origins of Human Burial, which will be published by Routledge. Dr. Pettitt has served as a consultant for a number of BBC and independent television productions.