Mapping Ancient Africa: Collaboration opportunity

July 26, 2024
WDG

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.

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Mapping Ancient Africa: Video of Seminar 10

January 12, 2024
WDG

The 10th Mapping Ancient Africa seminar took place on Tuesday 7th February 2023. The seminar was delivered by Cecile Blanchet (Helmholtz-Zentrum Potsdam) and highlighted recent work linking river sediments from the Nile with change in global climate systems, including El Nino.

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

  • Blanchet, C.L., Osborne, A.H., Tjallingii, R., Ehrmann, W., Friedrich, T., Timmermann, A., Brückmann, W. & Frank, M. (2021) Drivers of river reactivation in North Africa during the last glacial cycle. Nature Geoscience 14, 97-103. DOI: 10.1038/s41561-020-00671-3
  • Blanchet, C.L., Tjallingii, R., Schleicher, A.M., Schouten, S., Frank, M. & Brauer, A. (2021) Deoxygenation dynamics on the western Nile deep-sea fan during sapropel S1 from seasonal to millennial timescales. Climate of the Past 17, 1025-1050. DOI: 10.5194/cp-17-1025-2021
  • Blanchet, C.L., Ionita, M., Ramisch, A., Tjallingii, R., Brauer, A., Laruelle, L., Bagge, M. & Klemann, V. (2023) Pacemakers of extreme floods during warmer and wetter climates of the “Wild Nile” stage. PREPRINT (Version 1) available at Research Square DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-3051876/v1
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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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Scientific Methods in Archaeology

November 21, 2018
WDG

VU AmsterdamOver the last two weeks I have been giving my lectures at the VU Amsterdam “Scientific Methods in Archaeology” bachelor program. In my lectures we think about how to detect past environmental change with particular reference to tracking past human activities. As part of our exploration of past human-environment-climate interactions each student is asked to choose a scientific article, summerise it, and we then discuss it in class. The three papers sected this year covered the Neolithic of the Netherlands (Weijdema et al., 2011), a overview of Mediterranean and north African cultural adaptations to drough events during the Holocene (Mercuri et al., 2011), and an exploration of the role of humans in mega-faunal extinctions in South America (Villavicencio et al., 2015). All papers provided interesting points of discussion and an opportunity to think about different aspects of how we investigate past environmental and societal change.

Read the full student summaries below.

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