Paul Anthony Mellars was one of the major figures in Palaeolithic archaeology of the last fifty years. While at the outset of his career he fitted well into the orthodox picture of an archaeologist of the deep past, with a focus on the stone tools of south-west France – the capital of prehistory to some – by the end of his career his research was fully integrated into the broader and global world of palaeoanthropology, with important papers drawing on genetics, palaeoenvironments, hominin fossils, as well as the lithics of the period. Both in print and in person, he was characteristically direct, seldom shying away from controversy. Although he always remained firmly grounded in his archaeological speciality, his intellectual journey took him from typology to demography, from cave sequences to continental dispersals, and from stratigraphic minutiae to the grand narratives of human evolution.
Posted to Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the British Academy, 23