Dr Lydia V. Luncz

My research lies at the interface of primatology and archaeology. I am using archaeological methods to compare the development of technologies in wild primate species, including bearded capuchin monkeys in Brazil, long-tailed macaques in Thailand and Western chimpanzees in Ivory Coast, as well as early hominin artefacts in the Turkana Basin, Kenya. By studying non-human primates and ancestral humans, I seek to answer key questions about our cultural evolution. My work includes natural observations of primates in the wild, field experiments and excavations at sites of primates and early hominins. This comparative approach builds a novel framework to further investigate the evolution of technology in humans, our ancestors and non-human primates alike. Primate artefacts can be useful as a model for the behaviours of early hominin. The material record of these behaviours remain largely invisible without comparative analogues.
Since May 2020 I lead the Technological Primates Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. My research lab uses interdisciplinary approaches to investigate tool behaviour and the resulting material record across past and present technological primates.