Henshilwood became internationally known due to his excavations in the Blombos Cave, where - according to his study published in 2002 - the oldest known works of humanity had been discovered.

[1] Henshilwood and his work have been featured on National Geographic[2][3][4] and CNN Inside Africa.

During this time and until 2004 he worked as an adjunct associate professor at the department of anthropology, State University of New York, Stony Brook.

From there in 2002 he moved to the University of Bergen in Norway where he was appointed as a professor at the Centre for Development Studies in the Department of Archaeology.

[8] The center researches early human behavior and includes a team of multidisciplinary scholars, including paleoclimatologists Nele Meckler and Eystein Jansen and psychologists Andrea Bender and Kenneth Hugdahl.