Mapping Ancient Africa: Seminar 10

February 1, 2023
WDG

Mapping Ancient Africa (MAA) online seminars are 10! On the 7 February 2023 (17:00-18:00 CET) the following exciting seminar will be given:

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 Stefanie Kaboth-Bahr. 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.

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Mapping Ancient Africa: Video of Seminar 9

January 23, 2023
WDG

The 9th Mapping Ancient Africa seminar, and first of 2023, took place on Thursday 19 January. The seminar was delivered by Celine Vidal (University of Cambridge) and showcased recent work on the dating of volcanic deposits to constrain the age of hominin fossils in eastern Africa.

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.

References

  • Vidal, C.M., Lane, C.S., Asrat, A., Barfod, D.N., Mark, D.F., Tomlinson, E.L., Tadesse, A.Z., Yirgu, G., Deino, A., Hutchison, W., Mounier, A. & Oppenheimer, C. (2022) Age of the oldest known Homo sapiens from eastern Africa. Nature 601, 579-583. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04275-8
  • Vidal, C.M., Fontijn, K., Lane, C.S., Asrat, A., Barfod, D., Tomlinson, E.L., Piermattei, A., Hutchison, W., Tadesse, A.Z., Yirgu, G., Deino, A., Moussallam, Y., Mohr, P., Williams, F., Mather, T.A., Pyle, D.M. & Oppenheimer, C. (2022) Geochronology and glass geochemistry of major Pleistocene eruptions in the Main Ethiopian Rift: Towards a regional tephrostratigraphy. Quaternary Science Reviews 290, 107601. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2022.107601
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APD Workshop Series: R, Databases, and You!

January 17, 2023
sji15

Interested in African paleoecology? Want to incorporate African pollen data into your research or teaching?

If you read nothing else, please take this survey before January 25!

The African Pollen Database (APD) has been relaunched, and the Neotoma Paleoecology Database now contains over 200 APD records.   Data stewards working with APD and Neotoma have been meeting regularly for the last two years to upload data, but we are now changing the format of our meetings in order to start focusing on helping people use APD data for research and teaching!

We are developing a schedule of practical tutorials on APD data workflows in R, using Rneotoma, and a few other topics to take place over next few months (see this video for general info).

This is open to anyone interested in African paleoecology (students, researchers, teachers, etc)!  If you or your students might be interested in taking part in one or all of these, please take this very brief survey by January 25 to let us know.  Also if you have other students or researchers you think should get this email, let Sarah Ivory (sji15@psu.edu) or Chris Kiahtipes (chris.kiahtipes@gmail.com) know.

Mapping Ancient Africa: Seminar 9

January 12, 2023
WDG

I am delighted to announce the first online Mapping Ancient Africa (MAA) seminar of the New Year will take place on 19 January 2023 (17:00-18:00 CET), this will be the ninth in our series.

  • Speaker: Céline Vidal (University of Cambridge)
  • Title: Age of the oldest known Homo sapiens from eastern Africa
  • Related publication: Vidal, C.M., Lane, C.S., Asrat, A., Barfod, D.N., Mark, D.F., Tomlinson, E.L., Tadesse, A.Z., Yirgu, G., Deino, A., Hutchison, W., Mounier, A. & Oppenheimer, C. (2022) Age of the oldest known Homo sapiens from eastern Africa. Nature 601, 579-583. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04275-8

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.

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Mapping Ancient Africa: Video of seminar 8

December 19, 2022
WDG

The seventh Mapping Ancient Africa online seminar took place on Thursday 15 December 2022. The seminar was delivered by Chantal Kabonyi (University of Bukavu) and chaired by Manu Chevalier (University of Bonn). The presentation was delivered in French with English slides.

  • Les trois derniers millénaires d’histoire environnementale autour du lac Kivu: De la dorsale congolaise à la dorsale congo-Nil 
  • [The last three millennia of environmental history around Lake Kivu: From the Congolese ridge to the Congo-Nile ridge]

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.

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Mapping Ancient Africa: Seminar 8

November 21, 2022
WDG

I am pleased to announce that the eighth online Mapping Ancient Africa seminar will take place on 15 December 2022 (17:00-18:00 CET)

Speaker: Chantal Kabonyi (University of Bukavu)
Title: Les trois derniers millénaires d’histoire environnementale autour du lac Kivu: De la dorsale congolaise à la dorsale congo-Nil [The last three millennia of environmental history around Lake Kivu: From the Congolese ridge to the Congo-Nile ridge]

NOTE: This will be a duel language presentation with the presentation given in French and slides containing English text.

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 Manu Chevalier. 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.

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Mapping Ancient Africa: Video of seminar 7

November 11, 2022
WDG

The seventh Mapping Ancient Africa online seminar took place on Thursday 10 November 2022. The seminar was delivered by Manu Chevalier (University of Bonn) and showcased his new publication entitled: An introduction to the Climate REconstruction SofTware (CREST) model.

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.

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Reference

  • Chevalier, M. (2022) crestr: an R package to perform probabilistic climate reconstructions from palaeoecological datasets. Climate of the Past 18, 821-844. DOI: 10.5194/cp-18-821-2022
  • crestr An R package to perform probabilistic palaeoclimate reconstructions from palaeoecological datasets https://mchevalier2.github.io/crestr/

Mapping Ancient Africa: Seminar 7

October 26, 2022
WDG

I am pleased to announce that the seventh online Mapping Ancient Africa seminar will take place on 10 November 2022 (17:00-18:00 CET – please note change of clocks from summer time) 

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.

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Mapping Ancient Africa: Video of seminar 6 (take 2)

October 7, 2022
WDG

The sixth Mapping Ancient Africa online seminar took place on Thursday 6 October 2022. The seminar was delivered by Verena Foerster (Universität zu Köln) and showcased her new publication entitled: Pleistocene climate variability in eastern Africa influenced hominin evolution.

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.

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Mapping Ancient Africa: INQUA congress support

October 4, 2022
WDG

The Mapping Ancient Africa (MAA) project is offering five bursaries to help African based and/or early career researchers^ attend the up coming INQUA Rome congress. Each bursary will around Euro 1000 and should be used towards covering the cost of registration, accommodation and/or travel for the congress.

Application criteria:

  • Abstract submitted to INQUA Rome congress either to the Mapping Ancient Africa session, or to another session on a related topic (Deadline 1 November 2022).
  • Commitment to contributing an article for consideration to be published in the proposed MAA special issue of Quaternary International; for frame of references of the MAA project click here.

To apply submit the following information via emails to William Gosling as the corresponding Principle Investigator of the project. Applications should be clearly marked MAA-Application-YourName in the subject line:

  • Evidence of submission of an abstract to the INQUA Rome congress (copy of confirmation email and abstract).
  • Letter of motivation, including fit of the proposed article to the MAA aims and goals and statement of commitment to submit an article for consideration to be published in the Mapping Ancient Africa special issue of Quaternary International^^ (not more than 1 page)
  • Short academic CV, including highlight of up to 5 published articles indicating the scientific importance and your role in the publication (not more than 2 pages).

In the event of more applications being received than funding is available awards will be made by the MAA team (PIs and co-PIs) on the basis of the fit of the research to the MAA aims and goals. To receive funding receipts for all the expenses incurred will need to be provided (following INQUA regulations).

Deadline for application: 7 November 2022

Announcement of funding: 14 November 2022

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^ following definition for Early Career Researchers (ECR) or Developing Country Researchers (DCR) provided by INQUA.

^^ please note that no guarantee of final publication is given or implied by this commitment. All submitted manuscripts will be subject to the usual rigorous peer review procedures for the journal.

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