The Department of Archaeology Faculty: John Parkington

John Parkington
	archaeology dept, beattie building room 3.03.1 phone: +27 21 650-2353 fax: +27 21 650-2352 email: john.parkington AT uct.ac.za back to department home courses: intro to archaeology and social anthropology

_______________________________________________________________________________ My PhD thesis was a study of stone age people in the Cape and established many of the interests which I still have and which I still pursue. It was about mobility and seasonality in the archaeological record; it involved looking at the intersection of ethnographic, ecological, archaeological and historic records; it assessed the possible impact of human resource exploitation on animal and plant foodstuffs, especially shellfish; it attempted to integrate excavated and rock art information into a holistic overview; it tried to look introspectively at the archaeological record and understand what it can be persuaded to reveal; and it embodied a spatial, regional approach to understanding past hunter gatherer settlement. Carmel Schrire suggested I call it Follow the San and I’ve been doing that ever since. Most recently I have become involved in returning this archive to its source as a way of enriching school curricula and creating jobs around the rock paintings of the Clanwilliam area.
John Parkington is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Archaeology at UCT. He did both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Palaeolithic Archaeology at Cambridge University in England. With an Honours degree in 1966 he came to UCT as a Junior Lecturer and returned during his first university sabbatical year in 1974 to complete the three terms residence requirement for his PhD. His PhD was awarded in 1977, since which time he has been ad hominem promoted to Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor and full Professor.

Selected publications: Books Geoff Bailey and John Parkington (eds) 2009 The Archaeology of Prehistoric Coastlines. Paperback Edition. Cambridge. CUP. John Parkington, David Morris and Neil Rusch 2008 Karoo Rock Engravings. Cape Town, Krakadouw Trust. John Parkington 2006 Shorelines, Strandlopers and Shell Middens. Cape Town, Krakadouw Trust. John Parkington 2003 Cederberg Rock Paintings. Cape Town, Krakadouw Trust. Papers and chapters C Tribolo, N Mercier, H Valladas, JL Joron, P Guibert, Y Lefrais, M Selo, P-J Texier, J-P Rigaud, G Porraz, C Poggenpoel, J Parkington, J-P Texier and A Lenoble 2009 Thermoluminescence dating of a Stillbay-Howiesons Poort sequence at Diepkloof Rock Shelter (Western Cape, South Africa). Journal of Archaeological Science 30: 1-10. Guillaume Porraz, Pierre-Jean Texier, Jean-Philippe Rigaud, John Parkington, Cedric Poggenpoel and Dave Roberts 2008 Preliminary characterization of a Middle Stone Age lithic assemblage preceding the classic Howiesons Poort complex at Diepkloof Rock Shelter, Western Cape Province, South Africa. South African Archaeological Society Goodwin Series 10: 105-121. John Parkington 2008 Limpet sizes in stone age archaeological contexts at the Cape, South Africa: Changing Environment or Human Impact? In Early Human Impact on Macromolluscs. A Antczac and R Cipriani (eds) BAR International Series 266: 175-184. John Parkington 2007 On Diet and Settlement in Holocene South Africa. Current Anthropology 48 (4): 581-582. John Parkington 2007 llKabbo’s Sentence. In Claim to the Country P Skotnes (ed). Johannesburg and Cape Town. Jacana Press. Thalassa Matthews, John Parkington and Christiane Denys 2007 Community evolution of Neogene micromammals from Langebaanweg 'E' Quarry and other west coast fossil sites, south-western Cape, South Africa. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 245:332-352. John Parkington and John Fisher Jnr 2006 Small mammal bones on Later Stone Age sites from the Cape (South Africa): consumption and ritual events. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 16: 71-79. John Parkington 2006 From Neo-anthropes to modern people: The changing fortunes of the Middle Stone Age. In Blundell, G. (ed) Origins. Johannesburg. Double Storey. ISBN 1 77013 040 3. John Parkington 2006 The Archaeology of Late Pleistocene encephalisation in the Cape, Southern Africa. In H Soodyall (ed) The Prehistory of Africa, pp 64-75. Johannesburg. Jonathan Ball. Thalassa Matthews, John Parkington and Christiane Denys 2006 The taphonomy of the micromammals from the late Middle Pleistocene site of Hoedjiespunt 1 (Western Cape, South Africa). Journal of Taphonomy 4 (1): 1-16. Thalassa Matthews, Christiane Denys and John Parkington 2006 An analysis of the mole rats (Mammalia: Rodentia) from Langebaanweg (Mio-Pliocene, South Africa) GEOBIOS 39: 853-864. J-P Rigaud, P-J Texier, John Parkington and C Poggenpoel 2006 Le mobilier Stillbay et Howiesons Poort de l’abri Diepkloof. Comptes Rendue Paleovol 5: 839-849. 2002 Men, Women and Eland: Hunting and Gender among the San of Southern Africa. In Nelson, S.M. and Rosen-Ayalon, M. (eds) In Pursuit of Gender. New York. Altamira Press. Pp 93-117. 2002 (Broadhurst, C.L., Wang, Y., Crawford, M.A., Cunnane, S.C., Parkington,J.E. and Schmidt, W.F.) Brain-specific lipids from marine, lacustrine, or terrestrial food resources: potential impact on early Homo sapiens. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part B 131: 653-673. 2001 (Stynder, D.D., Moggi-Cecchi, J., Berger, L.R. and Parkington, J.) Human mandibular incisors from the late Middle Pleistocene locality of Hoedjiespunt 1, South Africa. Journal of Human Evolution 41: 369-383. 2001 Mobility, seasonality and Southern African hunter gatherers. South African Archaeological Bulletin 56: 1-7 2001 The impact of the systematic exploitation of marine foods on human evolution. In Tobias, P.V., Raath, M.A., Moggi-Cecchi, J. and G.A. Doyle (eds) Humanity from African Naissance to Coming Millennia: Colloquia in Human Biology and Palaeo-Anthropology. Part 7, Diet Firenze. Firenze University Press. Pp 327-336 2000 (Parkington, J.E., Cartwright, C., Cowling, R.M., Baxter, A. and Meadows, M.) Palaeovegetation at the last glacial maximum in the Western Cape, South Africa: wood charcoal and pollen evidence from Elands Bay Cave. South African Journal of Science 96:543-546 2000 (Churchill, S.E, Berger, L.R. and J.E. Parkington.) A Middle Pleistocene human tibia from Hoedjiespunt, Western Cape, South Africa. South African Journal of Science 96: 367-8. 1999 (Klein, R., Cruz-Uribe, K., Halkett, D., Hart, T. and Parkington, J.) Paleoenvironmental and human behavioural implications of the Boegoeberg 1 Late Pleistocene hyena den, Northern Cape Province, South Africa. Quaternary Research 52:393-403 1999 Crawford, M.A., Bloom, M., Broadhurst, C.L., Schmidt, W.F., Cunnane, S.C., Galli, C., Gehbremeskel, K., Linseisen, F., Lloyd-Smith, J. and Parkington, J. Evidence for the unique function of DHA during the evolution of the modern human brain. Lipids 34 (supplement): S39-47 1999 (Cowling, R. M., C.R. Cartwright, J.E. Parkington and J.C. Allsopp.) Fossil wood charcoal assemblages from Elands Bay Cave, South Africa: implications for Late Quaternary vegetation and climates in the winter-rainfall fynbos biome. Journal of Biogeography 26: 367-378. 1999 Clanwilliam Living Landscape Project. Nordisk Museologi 1999 1: 147-154.