The Antiquity of Man Mikey Brass

Mikey Brass

I was born on 02 July 1977. From 1996-1998 I studied for my undergraduate degrees in Archaeology and History. I obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Archaeology in 1998, with a mark of First Class Pass. I also obtained my Bachelor of Arts degree in History in 1998. In 1999, I entered the first year of postgraduate studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa the Honours year; this was completed in December 1999, whereupon I received my postgraduate Bachelor of Social Science (Honours) degree. I was the chairman of U.C.T.'s Archaeological Field Club in 1998 and 1999, and a member of The Egyptian Society of South Africa and The South African Archaeological Society.

As an undergraduate archaeology student, I was involved with excavations of Professor John Parkington (currently Head of the Department of Archaeology at U.C.T.) at Elands Bay (on the Southern African Cape West Coast) in 1997, and Associate-Professor Judy Sealy at Atlantic Beach (also on the S.A. Cape West Coast) in 1998. I participated in 1997 on an expedition to record Bushman rock art in the S.A. Cape Cederberg mountain range, under the guidance of John Lanham, Tony Manhire (both of the Spatial Archaeology Research Unit at U.C.T.) and Roydon Yates (formerly of the Spatial Archaeology Unit and now working on the S.A. Blombos Cave project, which is overseen by Associate-Professor Judy Sealy and Dr Chris Henshilwood, also of U.C.T.'s Archaeology Department).

As a postgraduate Honours student, I operated under the authority of Associate-Professor Judy Sealy in supervising the current undergraduate students at Atlantic Beach.

As chairman of the Archaeological Field Club, I led (with the co-operative assistance of the vice-chairman, Matt Chiswell, and the secretary, Nirdev Desai) two field trips: to the late Holocene site of Rooi Els, to the Acheulian and Middle Stone Age site of Hangklip (both on the S.A. Cape East Coast), and to the Cederberg. In May 1999, I independently arranged for a demonstration by Associate-Professor Tony Fairall (of the Astronomy Department at U.C.T., and head of the Planetarium), at Cape Town's Planetarium, of his rebuttal of Robert Bauval's "The Orion Mystery", for the benefit of the U.C.T. community as a whole. I was involved in the planning of a field trip, to the Cederberg, by two of the committee members and interested members of the Club during the July 1999 vacation. Additional expeditions that were undertaken in 1999 included further trips to the Cederberg, and to the famous paleoanthropological site of Langebaan (where the oldest Homo sapien footprints have been discovered, dating to 117 000 BP). Lectures on the Dead Sea Scrolls (by Dr Tilly Reisenbeger of U.C.T.'s Center for Jewish Studies) and the origins of fire (by Dr Matt Spanheimer, then a visiting researcher in U.C.T.'s Archaeology department) were given during the second half of 1999, and were very well attended by the U.C.T. community.

During my third year, in 1998 (see above), I wrote, under the supervisorship of Associate-Professor Andrew B. Smith, a dissertation on "The Origins of the Cattle Cult in Ancient Egypt". My research interest in Ancient Egypt stretches from the Predynastic to the end of the Old Kingdom's Fourth Dynasty (c. 2 400 B.C.). My subsequent Honours dissertation (1999) was on "The Origins of Modern Human Behaviour" and was supervised by Associate-Professor Judy Sealy.

I also hold a Masters of Arts degree in Archaeology from University College London (supervisor, Dr Kevin MacDonald), am a member of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists and am engaged to Isabelle, who is the woman in the above photograph.

In my private capacity, I participated as a volunteer on the 1996 Tel Miqne - Ekron excavation in Israel. This was the 13th and last session involving this principal Caananite Biblical city. Private studies have included an Ancient Egyptian correspondence course with the Oriental Institute of Chicago by Dr Peter Piccione.

I am currently the chairman of the British Centre for Science Education, which opposes attempts by creationists to have their materials taught as science (or "critiques of evolution") in school science classrooms.

I am also the Senior Systems Administrator for a major venture capital company and started my archaeology doctoral studies part-time in January 2008.

Conferences
November 2007. Investigating long-term changes in Saharan pastoral social organisation, 6000 – 1000 BC. African Archaeology Research Day 4, 24 November, Oxford University
June 2006. Analysing socio-economic and ideological changes in late Holocene Saharan hunter-gatherer and early pastoral societies. Society of Africanist Archaeologists 2006 Conference (June 22-26), Calgary, Canada. Abstracts available; click on the links within to access the available PowerPoint presentations.
August 2005. Analysing socio-economic and ideological changes in late Holocene Saharan hunter-gatherer and early pastoral societies. British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology conference.
January 2005. Investigating the origins of social complexity in early Saharan pastoralists. Current Research in Egyptology VI, University of Cambridge
December 2001. On the origins of the cattle cult in Ancient Egypt. Current Research in Egyptology III, University of Birmingham

Publications
Forthcoming (November 2008). Review of "Wengrow, David. The Archaeology of Early Egypt: Social Transformations in North-East Africa, 10,000 to 2650 BC" (Cambridge University Press). Archaeological Review from Cambridge 23(2)
2007. Review of "Blakely, Sandra. 2006. Myth, Ritual, and Metallurgy in Ancient Greece and Recent Africa" (Cambridge University Press). Archaeological Review from Cambridge 22(1)
2007. Reconsidering the emergence of social complexity in early Saharan pastoral societies, 5000 - 2500 BC. Sahara 18: 1-16
2006. Archaeology and Gender Studies. In Birx, H. J. (ed.) Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 224-246. Sage Publications, volume 1
2006. Sahara Anthropology. In Birx, H. J. (ed.) Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2042-2044. Sage Publications, volume 5
2006. Urbanism in Ancient Egypt. In Birx, H. J. (ed.) Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2258-2259. Sage Publications, volume 5
2006. Tools and Evolution. In Birx, H. J. (ed.) Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2209-2215. Sage Publications, volume 5
2003. Tracing the Origins of the Ancient Egyptian Cattle Cult. In, Eyma, A. K. & Bennett, C. J. (eds.) A Delta-man in Yebu. Occasional Volume of the Egyptologists' Electronic Forum, no.1
2002. The Antiquity of Man: Artifactual, Fossil and Gene Records Explored. Baltimore: PublishAmerica.
1999. Co-authored. Review of Michael Rice's "Egypt’s Making: The Origins of Ancient Egypt 5000 - 2000 BC. World Archaeological Bulletin 10, Nov. 1999

Additional information
In November 2005, I was a guest lecturer at the Archaeology Department, University of Malta, where I gave a 2 hour presentation on the origins of animal and plant domestication in Africa.