May 19, 2023
The thirteenth Mapping Ancient Africa seminar was delivered by Andrea Manica on the 18th May 2023. In the seminar Andrea introduced the pastclim R package and gave examples of how it can be applied to address questions related to human evolution and dispersal.
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.
May 17, 2023
The thirteenth Mapping Ancient Africa online seminar will take place on 18 May 2023 (17:00 CEST).
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.
March 24, 2023
I am excited to announce that I have recently joined the “Advisory Editorial Board” of The Holocene journal. Many thanks to editor-in-chief John Matthews for the invitation. Interesting to join a very experienced team, which includes both my PhD and post-doc supervisors; the esteemed Frank Mayle and Mark Bush! I look forward to receiving interesting new papers to examine.
The Holocene journal publishes research, review and forum papers focused on environmental change during the Holocene (last 11,700 years). It encourages the submission of manuscripts with an interdisciplinary approach covering palaeoenvironments, palaeoclimate, palaeoecology, palaeohydrology, palaeopedology, palaeoceanography and geo-archaeology. So if you have a some research in this area that you are looking for a home for please check out the details aims and scope, and criteria on the journal web page, click here.
February 1, 2023
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.
January 23, 2023
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
January 12, 2023
On the 22 December I gave my oratie (inaugural lecture), entitled “The Ecology of the Past”, related to my appointment as Professor of Palaeoecology & Biogeography at the University of Amsterdam. I really enjoyed the opportunity to mark this personal milestone with some many colleagues, friends and family. In case you missed the event you can watch it online via the universities portal by clicking here (or on the photo).
Note: (1) to flip between seeing the slides and the video feed just click on the screen, (2) running time of lecture until 50 minutes.
Reference
Gosling, W.D. (2022) The Ecology of the Past
Inaugural speech, University of Amsterdam.
November 11, 2022
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.
Reference
September 30, 2022
Following the postponement of our previous seminar I am pleased to announce the next Mapping Ancient Africa (MAA) seminar (the new number 6 in the series) will take place on Thursday 6 October at 17:00 (CEST).
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.
April 12, 2022
The fifth Mapping Ancient African project took place on Monday 11 April 2022 and focused on the African Pollen Database and past vegetation change in Africa.
The seminar was delivered by Sarah Ivory (Penn State University), Rahab Kinyanjui (National Museums of Kenya), and Lynne Quick (Nelson Mandela University). The seminar covers the principles behind and the working of the African Pollen Database (why make data openly available?) and the latest advances in eastern and southern Africa.
For more about the African Pollen Database check out:
You can watch the seminar now on the Ecology of the Past YouTube channel. Seminar details can be found here.
March 7, 2022
Gosling, W.D., Scerri, E.M.L. & Kaboth-Bahr, S. (2022) The climate and vegetation backdrop to hominin evolution in Africa. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 377, 20200483. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0483
Ecology of the past 