Shumon is the PI of ECOLITHIC and junior research group leader at MESH (Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities) and the Institute for Prehistoric Archaeology of the University of Cologne, Germany. His research is deeply interdisciplinary and seeks to bridge humanities and sciences perspectives on the deep history of our species and its various entanglements with the more-than-human world. Shumon has pioneered research in multispecies archaeology and pivoted the palaeoenvironmental humanities as a necessary lens to engage the past with contemporary concerns. Shumon’s work generally hopes to recover, and learn from, diverse past human-nonhuman systems, especially with regard to what in the “Western” tradition is rendered as “animal” and “technology”, and for which no contemporary parallels or analogies exist.
Contact: s.t.hussain[at]uni-koeln.de
Office: Aachener Str. 217, 50931 Cologne (a.r.t.e.s.)
Selected publications
Hussain S.T. (2025). Strukturwandel und Wirksamkeit archäologischer Theoriearbeit. In: kultURgeschichten: Ur- und Frühgeschichte aus historischer, methodischer und theoretischer Perspektive, edited by M. Augstein, M. Halle, U. Kraus, K. Krüger & M. Wöhrl, 539-562. Bielefeld: transcript.
Hussain, S.T. (2025). ‘The Heath and the Sea – A Speculative Palaeohistory of Multispecies Life in Northern Jutland during the Allerød Interstadial (ca. 13,300-12,800 years ago).’ In: Løvschal, M. and M. Haughton (eds.), A place for the heathlands? Human-heath relations in deep-time and contemporary perspectives. Digital Publication, Aarhus University Press, https://heathland.place/the-heath-and-the-sea
Baumann, C., Kandel, A.W. & Hussain, S.T. (2025) ‘Evidence for the catalytic role of humans in the assembly and evolution of European Late Pleistocene scavenger guilds‘ Quarternary Science Reviews 349: 109148, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2024.109148
Hussain, S.T. (2024) ‘What is animal prehistory?‘ Animal History 1: 1-20; https://online.ucpress.edu/ah/article/doi/10.1525/ah.2024.101/203221/What-Is-Animal-Prehistory
Hussain, S.T. (2024). ‘Feral ecologies of the human deep past: multispecies archaeology and palaeo-synanthropy.’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI), Early View, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.14152.
Hussain, S.T., and C. Baumann (2024). ‘The human side of biodiversity: coevolution of the human niche, palaeo-synanthropy and ecosystem complexity in the deep human past.’ Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 379 (1902), https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2023.0021.
Hussain, S.T., and N. Brusgaard (2024). ‘Human-Beaver Cohabitation in the Early and Mid-Holocene of Northern Europe: Re-visiting Mesolithic Ecology and Material Culture through a Multispecies Lens.’ The Holocene. preprint.
Hussain, S.T., F. Riede, D.N. Matzig, M. Biard, P. Crombé, F. Fontana, D. Groß, T. Hess, M. Langlais, J. Fernández-Lopéz de Pablo, L. Mevel, W. Mills, M. Moník, N. Naudinot, C. Posch, T. Rimkus, D. Stefański, and H.Vandendriessche (accepted). ‘A pan-European dataset revealing variability in lithic technology, toolkits, and artefact shapes ~15-11 kya.’ Scientific Data 10: 593, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02500-9.
Baumann, C., S.T. Hussain, M. Roblíčková, F. Riede, M.A. Mannino, H. Bocherens (2023). ‘Evidence for hunter-gatherer impacts on raven diet and ecology in the Gravettian of Southern Moravia.’ Nature Ecology & Evolution 7: 1302–1314, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02107-8. (shared first author)
Hussain, S.T., M. Weiss, and T. Kellberg Nielsen (2022). ‘Being-with Other Predators: Cultural negotiations of Neanderthal-carnivore relationships in Late Pleistocene Europe.’ Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 66: 101409, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2022.101409.
Hussain, S.T., and M. Will (2021). ‘Materiality, Agency and Evolution of Lithic Technology: An Integrated Perspective for Palaeolithic Archaeology.’ Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 28: 617-670, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-020-09483-6.
Hussain, S.T., and F. Riede (2020). ‘Palaeoenvironmental humanities: challenges and prospects of writing deep environmental histories.’ WIREs Climate Change 11 (5): e667, https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.667.
Talks
