Departing from Hull

May 11, 2026
WDG

Hull was a departure point for many people across the sea, and also a departure point for me in my life and academic career!

Last weekend I returned to Hull to catch up with friends from my undergraduate days for the first time in more than 20 years! We were all based at the University of Hull “Ferens Hall” hall of residence for our first year (1995-1996), following this we shared houses in the streets around the university main campus. Over the last twenty years later we have all headed off along different an meandering paths in life, but catching up with everyone felt very normal. A testement to the solid friendships developed during those three years at Hull. The reunion was helped along by some Manchester Bitter and Yorkshire stout (not avaliable on tap in the Netherlands) and some fine locations in the redeveloped Hull marina area.

Whilst at Hull, as well as making friends, I studies for a BSc (Hons) in Physical Geography. During my degree I got my foundations and inspiration for exploring past environmental change from a range of great lecturers, memorably including:

  • Steve Ellis (soil science; and author of the then recently published Ellis & Mellor [1995] text book),
  • Barbara Rumbsy (past river systems; who – if I remember the rumour correctly – left academia to run a tea shop in the Lake District – was this true?),
  • Martyn Pedley (sedimentology; double carbonate sedimentology on a Friday afternoon was typically punctuated by a swift trip to the Student Union bar [but we always went back]),
  • James Brasington (hydrology; who I remember running after down a crowded corridor for some reason long forgotten), and
  • Jane Bunting (palaeoecology; who really set me on my academic path!).

As an undergraduate arriving in Hull in 1995 I could never have imagined that I would be in Amsterdam 30+ years later working as an academic. I hope that, as an academic today, I manage to convey the same energy and enthusiams for my subject as the lecturers I had at Hull did for me. Who knows where my students, staff, or I, will all be 30+ more years time, but I am sure things will change (and wierdly stay the same) just as much as they have (have not) over the last 30 years. I hope that the path is varied and interesting, and that more friendships and progress are made along the way. So on with the adventure…

Me at Hull marine (May 2026)
Hull coat of arms
The joy of shuffle board!
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Mapping Ancient Africa: New publications by members

May 8, 2026
WDG

Although the Mapping Ancient Africa project is officially drawing to a close, researchers within the network are still actively collaborating and publishing. Periodically I will aim to collate and comment on member outputs that I come across. If you have a paper that should be highlighted here please get in contact and I will be happy to include it.

I have recently come across four papers these cover the role of disease in human evolution (Colucci et al., 2026), the identification and interpretation of charcoal fragments in sedimentary records from western Africa (Cornet et al., 2026), and archaeological evidence for past human activity in Nigeria (Omigbule et al. 2026; Orijemie et al., 2026).

  • Colucci, M., Leonardi, M., Blinkhorn, J., Irish, S. R., Padilla-Iglesias, C., Kaboth-Bar, S., Gosling, W. D., Snow, R. W., Manica, A., & Scerri, E. M. L. (2026). Malaria shaped human spatial organization for the past 74 thousand years. Science Advances, 12(17), eaea2316. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aea2316
  • Cornet, F., Montade, V., Bodin, S. C., Descloitre, J., Réjou‐Méchain, M., Viennois, G., Aleman, J. C., Assi‐Kaudjhis, C., Kenney, W. F., Oslisly, R., Tossou, M. G., Bremond, L., & Favier, C. (2026). From shape to source: Sedimentary charcoal morphology as a proxy for tropical burned biomass composition. Journal of Quaternary Science, 41(3), 490–506. https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.70053
  • Omigbule, A. O., Akogun, M. O., Orijemie, E. A., & Ogunfolakan, A. B. (2026). Aspects of garden-based agroforestry at Igbó-Orítàá, Ìwó, southwest Nigeria (c.14th-17th centuries CE). Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 72, 105768. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2026.105768
  • Orijemie, E. A., Opadeji, O. A., & Alabi, R. A. (2026). Archaeological and palynological evidence of iron smelting and its ecological consequences in the Ijebu Forest, Nigeria. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, 61(1), 110–139. https://doi.org/10.1080/0067270X.2025.2594901
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Fieldwork in South Africa

April 27, 2026
WDG

By Bouwe Groeneveld (MSc Biological Sciences, track Ecology & Evolution, University of Amsterdam)

From data to reality

Last year, between April and June, I worked on my bachelor project on the fire history of a site in South Africa called Giant’s Castle. From the Netherlands, I analysed sediment cores by counting charcoal fragments and looking at their shape to determine whether they likely came from grass or wood. The results were largely what you would expect in a mountain grassland. Most of the charcoal came from grasses. At the same time, there were clear changes in the composition of the fuel reflected in the charcoal record. I linked the increase in fire activity to the presence of people, and also observed shifts in the types of fuel being burned over time. It felt like slowly unravelling a story from the past. But it also remained abstract. I was working with numbers, figures, and photos of a place I had never actually been to. I had a sense of it, but it did not fully feel real. A year later, I was standing there myself.

From analysis to experience

For my MSc research, I returned to the same system, but this time physically. In the meantime, I had already expanded my earlier work by looking at dung fungal spores, as an indicator for grazing animals, and pollen to reconstruct vegetation dynamics. But to describe vegetation properly, you really have to see it. After a five-day workshop, which I described in a previous blogpost, I spent a weekend at the home of Prof. Trevor Hill and Prof. Jemma Finch. That weekend turned into something like a crash course in South African life. It even included watching their son play a cricket match. What stood out most to me was how much more outdoor-oriented life felt compared to what I am used to in the Netherlands. After that, I was introduced to the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg, where I spent three weeks working in the lab. Interesting work, but I had really come for something else. The field.

First fieldwork: Cathedral Peak

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Malaria shaped human spatial organization for the past 74 thousand years

April 23, 2026
WDG

We got the cover photo!
Credit: Martin & Ondrej Pelanek, www.phototrip.cz

Open access:

Colucci, M., Leonardi, M., Blinkhorn, J., Irish, S. R., Padilla-Iglesias, C., Kaboth-Bar, S., Gosling, W. D., Snow, R. W., Manica, A., & Scerri, E. M. L. (2026). Malaria shaped human spatial organization for the past 74 thousand years. Science Advances, 12(17), eaea2316. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aea2316

Shared Pasts and Shared Futures in New Orleans!

April 21, 2026
cmcmicha

I just attended a symposium at Tulane University organized by Kris Lane and Jason Nesbitt of the Center for Latin American Studies. “Andes + Amazon, Shared Pasts and Shared Futures” was an amazing interdisciplinary experience, with talks from scholars in disciplines ranging from law and history to paleoecology and paleogenetics. But we all had a common goal, which is understanding how human-environment interactions have shaped, and will continue to shape, the immense biological and cultural diversity of Andean and Amazonian ecosystems.

I enjoyed seeing colleagues, meeting new colleagues, and speaking with PhD students who are eager to work in tropical ecosystems. One of my highlights was meeting Bill Baleé, whose work I’ve read since I was a PhD student. He is a historical ecologist who studies how Indigenous people modify Amazonian forests. His knowledge is immense, and he is also an incredibly warm and welcoming person. I am really looking forward to our future collaborations. I think there is strong momentum coming from this symposium, and we plan to put out a volume of articles that show the importance of a multidisciplinary lens for understanding the future of Andean and Amazonian ecosystems. Stay tuned!

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Mapping Ancient Africa: Climate, vegetation & humans

April 14, 2026
WDG

The Mapping Ancient Africa (MAA) special issue in Quaternary International (QI) is now complete. Many thanks to all who contributed to the issue, and special thanks to my co-guest editors Stefanie Kaboth-Bahr and Rahab Kinyanjui, and QI editor Evdokia Tema, for their efforts in putting this together.

To wrap up the MAA special issue the guest editors have written an editorial covering the work of this multi-year project. In this we draw out key themes that have emerged from the work (vegetation dynamics, fire, and human behavior), review the project activities (including workshop photos), and highlight other publications by MAA members (lots of other exciting work going on). You can read all about it in:

The MAA multi-year project supported by INQUA is now in its final stages. We have delivered our final workshop (South Africa), our special issue, and created a body of online resources via this blog and the YouTube channel (>50 MAA videos!) that will hopefully inform and inspire researchers interested in past environmental change in Africa. Most importantly I hope that we have build a network of people (>140 members on our email list at the time of writing) who are passionate and engaged with understanding how climate, vegetation and humans have helped shape the African continent. I hope that these connections will keep building over the coming years and new projects, papers and insights will emerge.

The Ecology of the Past blog will continue, however, it will – of course – miss the regular input from the MAA project. Therefore, if anyone has suitable academic content that they wish to communicate through the blog please do not hesitate to get in contact.

A final thanks to INQUA Palaeoclimate commission (PALCOM) and Humans and Biosphere commission (HABCOM) for their support for MAA since its inception in 2021. Without this funding none of the work would have been possible.

For full list of MAA articles click here.

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Dutch Earth & Environmental Science Conference 2026

April 11, 2026
WDG

“Common Ground”

NWO NAC (Dutch Earth & Environmental Sciences Conference)

9-10 April 2026

The annual Dutch Earth & Environmental Science conference took place at the NH Noordwijk Conference Centre Leeuwenhorst in Noordwijkerhout amoung some of the many Dutch flower fields.

Before the conference was a “Strategic evening” which provided an opportunity to meet scientists from other universities and organisations, and to discuss topical issues. This included a presentation of the recently completed “Earth & Environmental Science Vision” document (which can be dowloaded from the AMW Raad [Earth & Environmental Science Council] web page).

On the first day of the conference proper I was involved in chairing two sessions on “Palaeoclimate”. These sessions covered a wide range of topics, proxies and time periods, and included work on the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, tipping points, and the Younger Dryas period. Excitingly for chairing these sessions I recieved a pair of NWO NAC socks!

On the second day of the conference – sporting my new NAC socks – I presented our recently published work on landscape openness in the pre-farming European landscape. This was centred upon the recent publication of the palaeoecological record from Well-Aijen (Limburg, the Netherlands) which was the culmination of many years, and many students, research (Gosling et al., 2025). It was great to get positive feedback from the Dutch scientific community on this study. The session also included exciting work on reconstructing past climate from pollen data using the CREST model (Chevalier, 2022) and the extraction of biodiversity data from sedimentary pollen records.

As well as the science talks the meeting had posters, exhibitors, workshops (I attended the one of scientific drilling) and social events (pub quiz, bowling, dancing). The atmosphere was very friendly and it was very easy to meet new people. The area around is very pretty and I even managed to get out for a short run on one of the days. I would recommend this event to anyone working in Earth or environmental sciences in the Netherlands.

References

  • Chevalier, M. (2022). crestr: An R package to perform probabilistic climate reconstructions from palaeoecological datasets. Climate of the Past, 18(4), 821–844. https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-821-2022
  • Gosling, W. D., de Wolf, I. K., Witteveen, N. H., de Zwaan, S. B., van Teulingen, C., Föllmi, D., Thissen, W., Vink, V. B., Woutersen, A., Philip, A. L., van Herk, M. J., Nascimento, M. N., Prins, M. A., & McMichael, C. N. H. (2025). Herbivory and vegetation openness in a pre-farming European landscape. Plant Ecology & Diversity, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/17550874.2025.2576566

Mapping Ancient Africa: Scientists

March 31, 2026
WDG

The Mapping Ancient Africa (MAA) research and writing workshop took place in South Africa during March 2026 (click here for more details). During the workshop four of the scientists participating were interviewed by MAA leader Stefanie Kaboth-Bahr to find out more about them, what they are focused on, and their aspirations for the future. These are now avaliable on the Mapping Ancient Africa YouTube playlist along with all the other videos from the project.

Participants

Zahra Omarjee (University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa)

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From Writing to Rock Art: A Week at the Mapping Ancient Africa Workshop

March 21, 2026
bouwegroeneveld

By Bouwe Groeneveld (MSc Biological Sciences, track Ecology & Evolution, University of Amsterdam)

From 2 to 6 March, I joined the Mapping Ancient Africa Research and Writing Workshop at Fountainhill Estate near Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. The week brought together focused writing, interdisciplinary exchange, and time in the landscape.

We began with a speed dating session that set an open and collaborative tone. Participants introduced their research backgrounds, ranging from botany and ecology to geography. The group was highly international, with participants from Ghana, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and the Netherlands. This diversity quickly proved valuable, as different perspectives naturally complemented one another throughout discussions.

The second day centred on the challenges of academic writing and publishing. Through group conversations and smaller sessions, we reflected on common difficulties such as structuring arguments and navigating the publication process. Later that afternoon, we walked across the estate to the Holley Shelter archaeological site. During the walk, I noticed how the surrounding landscape offered a sense of calm that contrasted with the intensity of writing. Along the way, we encountered a giraffe standing only a few metres from us, quietly feeding on acacia leaves.

The shelter itself was striking. A clear waterfall flowed down the rock face, catching the sunlight as it filtered into the green valley below. The interplay of water, rock, and light created a remarkably beautiful and tranquil setting, making the site feel both impressive and deeply serene.

Holley Shelter archaeological site
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On ceremony… twice!

March 19, 2026
WDG

Reyan Christ graduating with an MSc in Earth Sciences

On the 18 March 2026 I had the fun challenge of speaking at two MSc graduation ceremonies that were running at the same time. Two ‘long-term’ members of the palaeoecology team at the University of Amsterdam had reached the culmination of their degree program.

Reyan Christ graduating Cum laude in MSc Earth Sciences (track Earth System Science) and Jelle Kraak graduating in MSc Biological Sciences (track Ecology & Evolution).

Reyan was up 2nd in the Earth Sciences program, and Jelle was up 5th in Biological Sciences, giving me approximately 10 mins to get between rooms! Thankfully everything ran to time and I was able to deliver my speeches for them both. It was great to meet their friends and families and celebrate this important moment for their education.

Jelle Kraak graduating with an MSc in Biological Sciences

It was also great to celebrate the submission of a manuscript (the day before) on which they are first and second author. This manuscript is based on a combination of their, and other students, theses work on past environmental change in the Drakensberg Mountains (South Africa), and conducted in collaboration with Jemma Finch and Trevor Hill at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. We now cross our fingers that the journal editors and reviewers are as excited as we are about their findings. Fingers crossed we can be announcing the published version on here later in the year…

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