INQUA Fellowship Award: Alfred Houngnon

December 20, 2023
WDG

I am delighted to be able to report that Alfred Houngnon (University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin) has been awarded an INQUA Fellowship for 2024 to develop his research into past environmental change in the Dahomey Gap. This research will link up my laboratory, at the Institute of Biodiversity & Ecosystem Dynamics (University of Amsterdam), and the group of Dr Mireille S.S. Toyi (Laboratory of Applied Ecology, University of Abomey-Calavi). Below, and in the associated video report, Alfred explains the project and what he hopes to achieve during the project.

The Dahomey Gap project is designed to gain new insights on the West African palaeoenvironments using pollen, charcoal and dung fungal spore records to reconstruct past vegetation, fire and animal abundances. These empirical data will then be compared against paleoclimate models. Specifically, we will explore the interactions between fire, animals and vegetation around the Ewe-Adakplame forest in the south east of Benin Republic and highlight the role humans would have previously played in the modification of the landscape for millennia.

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Palaeoecology course 2022 goes archaeology…

September 16, 2022
WDG

As part of this years BSc Palaeoecology course at the University of Amsterdam we visited the Department of Archaeology. Organised by Anja Fischer we visited the human bone collection, the animal bone collection and the archaeobotany section. Amazing collections and lots of opportunities for cross faculty projects and teaching.

In addition to explaining the physical reference collections Anja also explained how she has been developing data mining techniques to allow information to be synthesised from the thousands of archaeological reports across the Netherlands.

She used this approach to make new discoveries about the role of urban farming and ruralisation in Dutch history. Her findings formed a report for the Dutch national heritage organisation (Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed) which can be downloaded for free (in English).

Fischer, A., van Londen, H., Blonk, A., Visser, R.M. & Renes, J. (2021) Urban Farming and Ruralisation in The Netherlands (1250-1850): Unravelling farming practice and the use of (open) space by synthesising archaeological reports using text mining. Nederlandse Archeologische Rapporten 68. Download free here.

Job: PhD Caribbean Palaeoecology

September 9, 2022
WDG

The Palaeoecology Research Group within the Department of Archaeology at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology, Jena, Germany is pleased to announce a new vacancy for a doctoral student exploring human-environment interactions in the Caribbean. The position will be based in Jena, Germany for a period of 3 years with the option for extensions and supervised by Dr. Yoshi Maezumi.

The Palaeoecology Research Group analyses palaeoecological and archaeobotanical proxies from sedimentary archives, including pollen, phytoliths, charcoal and stable isotopes to examine topics including the legacy of human land-use on ecosystems, spatio-temporal patterns of natural and human-driven fire activity, and the influence of natural and human disturbance regimes on the biogeographic distribution of plants and animals in past ecosystems.

Closing date: 30 September 2022

For full details and how to apply click here.

For further information contact Dr. Yoshi Maezumi.

Fields and feasts

July 28, 2017
WDG

If you have exciting new research on past ecological change similar to this please consider submitting it for consideration to be published in Vegetation History & Archaeobotany.

If you have exciting new research on past ecological change please consider submitting it to Vegetation History & Archaeobotany.

Two articles recently published on-line in the journal Vegetation History & Archaebotany (of which I am an Associate Editor) recently caught my attention.These explore:

For more detailed thoughts on these papers read on…

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