Dr Jamie Hampson

Professor Jamie Hampson specialises in Indigenous rock art and belief systems; cognitive archaeology and anthropology; and post-colonial history and heritage. He has conducted extensive archaeological and anthropological fieldwork in North and South America, southern Africa, Australia, and India. In collaboration with Traditional Elders and Indigenous groups, he has documented hundreds of rock art sites.

Jamie has a PhD in Archaeology from Cambridge; an MPhil in Archaeological Heritage and Museums (also Cambridge); and a BA (and six-guinea MA) in History (Oxford).

Current projects include work on rock art regionalism and identity in the Amazon; Indigenous heritage and world views; post-colonial historiography; cultural tourism and the presentation of heritage sites to the public; the commodification of the past; the relationships between humans and animals; and human interaction with cultural landscapes.

Prior to his arrival in Cornwall in 2018, Jamie was a lecturer at the University of Cambridge and the University of Western Australia. From 2014-17 he was also a Principal Investigator and a Marie Curie Global Research Fellow at Stanford University and the University of York. In addition to this, Jamie has received grants totalling c. £1 million from the Australian Research Council, the University of Cambridge, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). He tries to spend at least six weeks each year working in the field with Indigenous groups, often acting as an advisor on how best to develop visitor centres and cultural 'keeping places' in remote regions.

Jamie's latest books include Rock Art and Regional Identity: a Comparative Perspective (Routledge, 2016); Visual Culture, Heritage and Identity: Using Rock Art to Re-connect Past and Present (2021 ed. vol. with A. Rozwadowski); and Powerful Pictures: Rock Art Research Histories Around the World (2022 ed. vol. with S. Challis and J. Goldhahn, Oxford: Archaeopress). As of June 2024, he has published 40 journal articles and book chapters (including 28 as sole- or leading-author). His latest book chapter is for the Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology.

Jamie is currently accepting PhD and MRes students on any of the topics outlined above.

Research supervision:

Please see the Overview section.