FREE LECTURE: The Star Crossed Stone

For over 100 years palaeontologists have been collecting fossil sea urchins and using them in studies of evolution, palaeoecology, biostratigraphy and biogeography. But the presence of such fossils in archaeological sites throughout Europe, northern Africa and the Near East, show that people have been collecting these fossils for up to 400,000 years. Homo heidelbergensis, H. neanderthalensis, as well as H. sapiens, seem to have been equally fascinated by fossil urchins. Understanding what these people thought of these fossils can be ascertained from archaeology, mythology and folklore. Their archaeological association indicates that in many Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age societies, fossil urchins were objects of profound spiritual significance and were probably associated with resurrection myths. Recent folklore associated with them, particularly folk names such as shepherd's crowns, fairy loaves and thunderstones, provides further insight into the myths that were associated with them, mainly involving their use in the last couple of thousand years as objects that protected their owner from evil or misfortune. In his address Ken McNamara will argue that people's fascination with five-pointed stars for at least 5,000 years has evolved from an earlier reverence for these star-crossed stones.

Ken McNamara graduated from the University of Aberdeen, and obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. For the last 26 years he has been a curator at the W.A. Museum. His research focuses on using the fossil record to unravel the patterns and processes of evolution. Using mainly trilobites and echinoids, he has investigated the role of developmental change in evolution. His research has also been in taxonomy (during the course of which he has described 69 new species and 13 new genera of invertebrates), functional morphology, palaeoecology and palaeobiogeography. More recently Ken