Benjamin Utting
Benjamin Utting is an archaeologist and anthropologist broadly interested in the relationship between humans and their environments throughout prehistory. He is particularly interested in the initial dispersals of humans through modern-day Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Pacific. His research primarily involves the analysis of stone tool assemblages, which can lend insight into behavioral variability in human, hominin, and hominid populations across space and time. He is currently involved with archaeological, ecological, and palaeoenvironmental projects in northern Vietnam and eastern Indonesia. He is also interested in science communication and has served as a museum educator/educational consultant at the National Museum of Natural History. Utting holds a Bachelor of Arts from Stony Brook University and an MPhil/Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. He is currently a Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellow in the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
Utting, B. 2023. “Leave No Stone Unturned: Exploring Behavioural Variability in Expedient Stone Tool Assemblages”. In: Asia’s Heritage Trend: Internal and External Perspectives, edited by Minjae Zoh and Jongil Kim. Routledge. Pp. 275-294
Utting, B. 2022. Geochemical fingerprinting of Pleistocene stone tools from the Tràng An Landscape Complex, Ninh Bình Province, Vietnam. PLoS ONE 17(6): e0269658
Stimpson, C., O’Donnell, S., Nguyen, T.M.H., Holmes, R., Utting, B., Kahlert, T., Rabett, R. 2021. Confirmed archaeological evidence of water deer in Vietnam: relics of the Pleistocene or a shifting baseline? Royal Society Open Science
Kahlert, T., O’Donnell, S., Stimpson, C., Nguyen, T.M.H., Hill, E., Utting, B., Rabett, R. 2021. Mid-Holocene coastline reconstruction from geomorphological sea level indicators in the Tràng An World Heritage Site, Northern Vietnam. Quaternary Science Reviews 263(1)
Stimpson, C.M., Utting, B., O’Donnell, S., Huong, N.T.M., Kahlert, T., Manh, B.V., Khanh, P.S., & Rabett, R.J. “An 11 000-year-old giant muntjac subfossil from Northern Vietnam: implications for past and present populations.” Royal Society Open Science 6:161461
Pargeter, J., Shea, J.J, & Utting, B. Quartz backed tools as arrowheads and hand-cast spearheads: Hunting experiments and macro-fracture analysis. Journal of Archaeological Science 73: 145-157 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2016.08.001