August 14, 2024
During the Mapping Ancient Africa writing workshop in Kenya (3-6 June 2024) Stefanie Kaboth-Bahr conducted a series of short interviews with the scientists attending. In this, final, instalment of the interviews the thoughts of the instructors on the course are presented. Watch all the Mapping Ancient Africa videos on the Mapping Ancient Africa YouTube Playlist.
August 13, 2024
During the Mapping Ancient Africa writing workshop in Kenya (3-6 June 2024) Stefanie Kaboth-Bahr conducted a series of short interviews with the scientists attending. Below you can find part 2 (of 2) of the interviews with the participants in the workshop. Watch the videos to find out their scientific stories and top tips for academic writing. Watch all the Mapping Ancient Africa videos on the Mapping Ancient Africa YouTube Playlist.
August 12, 2024
During the Mapping Ancient Africa writing workshop in Kenya (3-6 June 2024) Stefanie Kaboth-Bahr conducted a series of short interviews with the scientists attending. During the interviews she asked the participants and instructors to describe their scientific background, what had motivated them to take part in the writing workshop, and what they thought the most important thing they had gained from it. You can now meet the first four of these scientists now by watching the videos below, or catch up with all the latest videos on the Mapping Ancient Africa YouTube Playlist.
July 31, 2024
The European Conference of Tropical Ecology will take place in Amsterdam between 24 and 28 February 2025. The call for session ideas is currently open (deadline 19 August). So please visit the conference web pages to find out more and submit your idea that will help shape the program and make this conference a success.
To find out how to submit your session idea click here.
July 31, 2024
Open access link (50 days limit) here
Bremond, L., Aleman, J.C., Favier, C., Blarquez, O., Colombaroli, D., Connor, S.E., Cordova, C.E., Courtney-Mustaphi, C., Dabengwa, A.N., Gil-Romera, G., Gosling, W.D., Hamilton, T., Montade, V., Razafimanantsoa, A.H.I., Power, M.J., Razanatsoa, E., Yabi, I. & Vannière, B. (2024) Past fire dynamics in sub-Saharan Africa during the last 25,000 years: Climate change and increasing human impacts. Quaternary International. DOI: 10.1016/j.quaint.2024.07.012
July 26, 2024
On the 25 July 2024 the 19th Mapping Ancient Africa (MAA) seminar, entitled Climate frameworks for the Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age in Northwest Africa, was delivered by Solène Boisard (University Montreal). In the seminar Solène presented two lines of evidence for past climate change in north-western Africa over the last c. 70,000 years. One from mechanistic climate models (via the PastClim package, for more details see: Leonardi et al. 2023) and one from reconstructions based on archaeological evidence. She found good agreement between the two approaches and linked climatic changes to the transition from Middle Stone Age to Late Stone Age technologies.
Details of this seminar can be found here. You can find more Mapping Ancient Africa seminar videos on the “Ecology of the Past” YouTube channel.
July 26, 2024
COLLABORATION OPPORTUNITY: The TIP-TOP project, funded through the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and awarded to Rick Hennekam at the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), is running from 2024-2029 and aims to use sediments accumulated in front of North African rivers to study environmental tipping points in North Africa. Specifically, the project focuses on available sediments from the Nile River delta, a now-dormant river system in Libya, as well as material from in front of the Senegal and Gambia rivers that will be acquired during a cruise early 2025. A multidisciplinary group of scientists is collaborating within this project, including scientists from NIOZ, GFZ Potsdam, ETH Zürich, Wageningen University, and the Utrecht University, using especially (in)organic and palynological proxies. Yet, we are keen to start new collaborations, especially with scientists based in northwest Africa. Potentially we could aim for the INQUA Fellowship Program For International Mobility (deadline 15 of September, 2024) for someone to gain international experience at one of the involved institutes for the duration of 3–6 months. If you are interested to link up with Rick please join the seminar to speak with him, or contact him directly. Note that participation in the 2025 expedition to the coasts of Gambia, Senegal, and Mauritania can be discussed too, but available places are very limited.
This video was recorded after the 19th online Mapping Ancient Africa seminar given by Solène Boisard, to watch her seminar on the past climate of north-western Africa and others in the series click here. To find out more about the Mapping Ancient Africa project click here.
July 15, 2024
During the Mapping Ancient Africa (MAA) workshop in Kenya (3-6 June 2024) the session delivered by Rahab Kinyanjui (National Museums of Kenya) was recorded for those that could not make it. The seminar was focused on how to deal with reviewer comments. While this was targeted for participants focused on developing their manuscripts for the MAA special issue of Quaternary International (for full details click here). This seminar is relevant to all those facing reviewer comments on their scientific manuscripts.
For further information on developing scientific manuscripts you might also be interested to check out our video on how to structure a scientific article (click here). For other MAA online content visit our YouTube channel for seminars, project updates, and to meet our scientists.
July 12, 2024
On the 20 June 2024 the 18th Mapping Ancient Africa (MAA) seminar was delivered by Kumar Akhilesh (Sharma Centre for Heritage Education). This seminar was a little different to most MAA seminars in that it focused on another INQUA project, rather than a specific research line. In the talk Kumar outlined the INQUA funded “PalaeoHome” project and highlighted work on hominin evolution in the Indian sub-continent.
Details of this seminar can be found here. You can find more Mapping Ancient Africa seminar videos on the “Ecology of the Past” YouTube channel.
July 11, 2024
The next Mapping Ancient Africa seminar will take place on 25 July 2024 at 17:00 CEST (15:00 GMT).
The seminar will be delivered via Zoom. The link for the seminar can be obtained from the MAA Slack channel or by contacting the chair of this seminar (William Gosling). If you want to know more about the Mapping Ancient Africa project visit our web pages and please do not hesitate to get in contact if you want to get involved.
Ecology of the past 