10 Facts About Paul Mellars

Sir Paul Anthony Mellars was a British archaeologist and professor of prehistory and human evolution at the University of Cambridge.

Paul Mellars was born in 1939 in the village of Swallownest near Sheffield.

Paul Mellars's father, Herbert Mellars, was a miner and a member of the Plymouth Brethren.

Paul Mellars married his wife Anny in 1969, having first met in an archaeological field trip in the Dordogne in 1964.

Paul Mellars briefly served as acting master of the college in 2007, following the resignation of Sir Alan Wilson, but six months later lost the election to become the formal successor to Wilson to Oliver Rackham.

Paul Mellars has held visiting positions at the Binghamton University and the Australian National University.

Paul Mellars studied the way in which mesolithic hunter-gatherer populations in Britain adapted to climate changes following the last ice age.

Paul Mellars carried out excavations on early Mesolithic sites at Oronsay in the Inner Hebrides in Scotland and published the results from work at Star Carr in North Yorkshire.

Paul Mellars was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1977, a Fellow of the British Academy in 1990 and a member of the Academia Europaea in 1999.

Paul Mellars was knighted in the 2010 New Year Honours for services to scholarship.