Sam Challis
William Robert Challis is a British archaeologist. He is Head of the Rock Art Research Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Challis graduated with a BA in Archaeology from the University of Durham in 1996, and later earned an MSt and a DPhil at the University of Oxford. He wrote his DPhil thesis on the impact of horses on AmaTola 'bushmen' in Southern Africa.
Career and research
Challis describes his main research interest as the expression of 'the interaction between hunter-gatherers, pastoralists and farmers, as well as Europeans' in global rock art. He studies 'both historical and modern indigenous ontologies as well as cultural creolization following contact', largely from a rock art perspective. His research programme in the Matatiele trains locals as field technicians.He is a Research Affiliate of the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology at the University of Michigan, and also an Honorary Research Fellow of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Aberdeen.
He co-authored Deciphering Ancient Minds: The Mystery of San Bushman Rock Art with David Lewis-Williams.