Digging deeper: Archaeologist Eleanor Scerri talks about gender, grit, and groundbreaking science

Archaeologist and researcher ELEANOR SCERRI recently made the headlines in Malta and internationally for her involvement in a groundbreaking discovery. Excavations in a Mellieha cave revealed that Malta’s history is at least 1,000 older than we thought. This also revealed that the first people to live on the island were hunter-gatherers, not farmers. In this interview we dig a bit deeper into Eleanor’s journey as a researcher, woman and mother.

How did your love for archaeology start?

My mother was always deeply interested in archaeology and human evolution, so I guess I had a bit of an influence from early on. I was one of those nerdy kids who knew all the dinosaur names. When I was around four, my parents took me to the Natural History Museum in London, and I told them it was the most important day of my life. I knew then what I wanted to do when I grew up.

I've always been fascinated by how different the world once was. I became curious about how we looked, how we evolved - how we got to this point. I studied archaeology at the University of Malta. The focus there was very much on the archaeology of the country, which, until recently, was thought to be mostly "later" archaeology.

But I wanted something else. I wanted to study hunter-gatherers, Neanderthals, and human evolution. So I went to the UK, where I had family - my mum is British - and did my MA there. Afterward, I took six years out, trying to forge a career in music – my other passion.

Eventually, I reconnected with archaeology and started a PhD at the University of Southampton. I quit a well-paid job with a clear career path to dive back into archaeology - this time focusing on the first humans like us in the deserts of North Africa and Arabia. I didn’t expect to find much, but I did. Interesting things. And it’s also how I met my partner, who was also working on the early prehistory of Saudi Arabia.

How was it after that?

It was really tough at first. I didn’t have much money, but I got funding halfway through my PhD - and that was a turning point. The questions I was asking weren’t always fashionable, but I stuck with them.

I received funding that allowed me to live, travel, and access collections. That helped me scale things up. On the strength of my results, I landed prestigious post-doctoral fellowships: first a Fondation Fyssen fellowship in France at the University of Bordeaux, then a British Academy Fellowship at the University of Oxford, together with a junior fellowship at Jesus College.

My daughter was born during that time. I spent my maternity leave writing up new fellowship applications. I applied for a Marie-Skłodowska Curie Fellowship from the European Research Council and got it, which took me to Germany.

“I achieved this research with an incredible team, many of whom were also young women. I noticed that despite these triumphs, many of them felt like frauds – this ‘impostor syndrome’ is very common, and something I also feel.”

The Max Planck Society (Germany's premier non-university research organisation) had just launched the Lise Meitner Excellence Programme at that point. The programme is designed to attract and specifically promote exceptionally qualified female scientists. It was aimed at addressing the haemorrhaging of women in academia and the lack of female scientists at higher academic levels.

In 2018, I published a paper that challenged the long-held idea that our species originated from a small population in a specific region of Africa. The new ‘Pan-African evolution’ model has now become the dominant model in the field, and on the strength of this year, I was awarded the Lise Meitner professorship which comes with funding for a permanent research group.

***“There are so many lessons from the past: human health, sustainable living, what it really means to be human… There's no single way to be human.”***

In 2019, I set up my research group which focused on trying to add detail for the Pan-African evolution model by focusing on West Africa, a region that has been overlooked. I particularly wanted to look at its rainforest regions, where people were not supposed to have lived until much later.

People thought it was crazy. “There’s nothing in the rainforest,” they said. We published a paper this year [2025] in Nature, the top scientific journal in the world, showing that the oldest evidence of humans in rainforests comes from West Africa – a major validation for my model of human evolution. I achieved this research with an incredible team, many of whom were also young women. I noticed that despite these triumphs, many of them felt like frauds – this ‘impostor syndrome’ is very common, and something I also feel.

How do you figure out where to look in such a big world?

You have to understand what hunter-gatherer life was like, what the world looked like back then. It means deep-diving into local literature and ecology.

People like freshwater, food, raw materials. However, they were far from primitive. They had an incredible ecosystem knowledge we have now lost. We think of prehistory as a linear march of ‘progress’, but this is wrong. We have gained knowledge, but we have lost a lot too.

But why so much energy on the past?

I have an intense curiosity. It connects me to the world somehow. Looking back and seeing where we come from feels comforting - looking forward is full of uncertainty. But there are so many lessons from the past: human health, sustainable living, what it really means to be human. Is our nature dictated by where we grow up? There's no single way to be human.

I’m interested in how humans have always impacted nature in the past - we’ve always impacted species and have driven some to extinction, but there’s a pervasive idea that before farming was invented, environments with humans somehow remained ‘pristine’.

We’re starting to realise that this is not the case, which complicates things like environmental restoration. What are we restoring to if we don’t understand what it was like before we interfered?

***“I think the most radical act a woman can do is to be happy and successful - and let the rest roll off.***”

Take Malta, for example. There's a plant that is rare today because its seeds need to germinate by passing through an animal’s stomach, but nothing eats it today, so it has become rare. In the past, it was probably deer who ate it, but they went extinct a few thousand years ago.

It’s therefore not enough to know what plants and animals were present. We need to know how they interacted with each other to understand the abundance and distribution of different vegetation in the past, and how animals impacted everything from seed distribution to soil chemistry. Critically, this will also reveal what factors make our ecosystems more resilient.

Understanding the past can therefore help us have a better future.

What did the discovery in Malta mean to you?

There’s a certain poetry to it. I left Malta because I thought there was no hunter-gatherer archaeology to investigate, trained abroad, only to come back... and find it. It feels like it had to happen, even though I don’t believe in destiny. I’m so proud of what we achieved with an amazing team. They're fantastic scientists and even better people.

It hit me hard when we realised what we’d found. We tested it again and again, trying to falsify it, to see whether we had misinterpreted anything - until we were sure and ready to publish and stick our necks out.

We overturned decades of consensus that said hunter-gatherers couldn’t get to remote, small islands. But they did. Humans have been interacting with Malta for a long time, and they possessed an extraordinary ecosystem knowledge of both land and sea.

How do you make family life work?

In this line you have to travel a lot. I have fieldwork programmes in six West African countries. As I grew older and became a mother, I learnt that you have to let go, and delegate.

My role is now to set the research questions and see the big picture. One of the biggest struggles after becoming a mother was finding that rhythm between work and life. I’m still working on it.

*Mummy at work. This picture was drawn by Eleanor’s daughter.*

Does gender make a difference in your field?

Women outnumber men at degree level, but when it comes to postdocs, they start dropping out - family responsibilities, lack of privilege, and financial uncertainty all add up. Academic structures also reward a kind of thick-skinned personality type and the ability to put in long working hours that often impact women more than men. You have to have an elephant hide. Around 80% of the women I started out with have left academia.

In my case I kept going. It’s a mixture of luck and sheer doggedness. I was lucky to be championed by some very good people who helped me and gave me opportunities – most of them were men who have always been amazing allies. I try to return that to junior scientists now.

Yes, there are barriers. Yes, there’s sexism - sometimes overt, sometimes subtle. I just try to be the change. I give opportunities to people who are good - not just women. But when I see a talented woman who just needs a chance, I do what I can.

I hire based on merit, and my team is about 50% women, which is as it should be given that half the population consist of women. And yet I get asked: “Why are there so many women in your team?” Why are you counting? This is what hiring without bias looks like.

Is there anything you would tell women who want this sort of career?

I have a very supportive partner, and women need to think about that if they want to have children. It can be short-sighted not to.

Look at the bigger picture. For example, the cost of childcare is huge and can put some people off from working. But this choice can affect your future earnings, so it might be worth paying for childcare now not to miss out on future, longer-term promotions and valuable experience.

“What I’ve seen in academia is women postponing family only to realise it’s getting too late. Resorting to IVF is probably more common in academia than in other groups for this reason… but there are options today that didn’t exist in the past, like freezing your eggs in your 20s.”

My career has been a fundamentally happy one, with largely fantastic, kind and supportive colleagues – both male and female. As women, we need ways to stay grounded in the chaos we constantly juggle. And it’s a big ask.

Taking things on the chin, believing in yourself - it’s not easy. But slowly and steadily, I’ve pushed on. I think the most radical act a woman can do is to be happy and successful - and let the rest roll off. We need to develop that Teflon quality if we want to keep going.

What I’ve seen in academia is women postponing family only to realise its getting too late. Resorting to IVF is probably more common in academia than in other groups for this reason. It’s heartbreaking when it doesn’t work.

This too is something to think about, but there are options today that didn’t exist in the past, like freezing your eggs in your 20s. This gives us options, even if we aren’t yet sure that motherhood is something we might want at that stage in life. For me, parenthood is an incredible journey that has also made me a better scientist, and a better person

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