Riley Smallman

Riley Smallman (they/he) is a zooarchaeological PhD researcher at University of Exeter, co-supervised by University of Reading.

Their PhD project - 'CROW - CultuRal co-evOlution of corvids: Winged omens of the times', funded by South, West & Wales Doctoral Training Partnership - seeks to explore changing perspectives on birds of the corvid family (crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, magpies, jays and choughs) in England from the Palaeolithic up until the present day. This project takes a holistic and interdisciplinary approach, with techniques ranging from traditional zooarchaeology and osteological analyses, to iconographic explorations and dietary isotopic analysis, as well as considerations relating to modern field ecology and animal psychology.

As part of the 'CROW', Riley undertook an auditing placement within the zooarchaeology reference collection held by Historic England (Fort Cumberland) in 2022, as well as joining the Cornish Jackdaw Project (Penryn) wild jackdaw nest recording team in 2023. They are also grateful to a range of museum and collection services for their collaboration in providing access and permissions to analyse archaeological material.

Riley's project is further associated with the Wellcome Trust funded 'From 'Feed the Birds' to 'Do Not Feed the Animals'' project, particularly looking at how corvid diet has changed over time, and interrogating whether scavenging bird diet may hold evidence of prehistoric excarnation practices.

He is also part of the Centre for Human-Animal-Environment (HumAnE) Bioarchaeology at Exeter and one of the coordinators of PRISM (Exeter's LGBTQ+ STEMM network). 

They are supervised by Prof. Naomi Sykes (zooarchaeology, University of Exeter) and Dr. Stuart Black (isotope geochemistry, University of Reading).