The next Mapping Ancient Africa seminar will take place online at 17:00 CEST on 16 May 2024.
Speaker: N’dji dit Jacques Dembele (President of WAQUA, Université des sciences sociales et de gestion de Bamako, Mali)
Title: Quaternary period seismicity on the West African Craton
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.
Amazonian rainforests are incredibly biodiverse and provide global ecosystem services, but are threatened by fires, which completely alter ecosystem function and structure. Fires, especially in western Amazonia, almost always have an anthropogenic origin. However, much is unknown about the long-term recovery and multi-generational successional processes following fire events. Due to the long lifespan of tropical trees, past fires may have left ecological legacies in modern forest composition in Amazonia. The goal of this thesis is to investigate how past fire events impact successional trajectories of past vegetation change and whether these fire events and related human impacts have left ecological legacies in modern Amazonian forests. I specifically focus on western Amazon and changes in palm abundances and composition through time, as palms were an economically important plant family to past peoples. I compared lake charcoal records across the Amazon Basin and found fire was least prevalent in western Amazonia. On a local scale, very limited evidence of past disturbances was present in forest plots in northwestern Amazonia. Palm abundances have been increasing since the mid-Holocene, but this increase is not related to past fire events. Past fire likely have left low to none ecological legacies in these forest plots. Modern trait composition across western Amazonia is associated with past fire events, but more research is necessary to disentangle relationships between past fire, soils, and modern vegetation. Overall, western Amazonia likely contains the least intense ecological legacies in comparison with the rest of Amazonia.
The 16th Mapping Ancient Africa seminar took place online on Friday 12th April 2024. The seminar was delivered by Stéphanie Bodin (Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt). In the seminar Stéphanie demonstrated how the examination of ancient charcoals found in caves used for shelter by hunter-gather populations living in Ethiopia at the end of the African Humid Period (4,000-2,000 years ago) can provide insights into vegetation and human selection of woody resources.
Developing new applications for plant wax n-alkane biomarkers can deepen our understanding of ecosystem history. In this thesis I study modern and sedimentary n-alkane signals, sourced along the tropical Andes, to better understand how they can be used as a proxy for past environmental change. The overarching question addressed in this thesis is: what do n-alkane patterns extracted from sedimentary records reflect? Specifically, I address:• Do environmental or taxonomic factors dominate the n-alkane signal?• Does the n-alkane signal alter as the plant material degrades?• How much of the n-alkane variability can be explained by our analytical protocols?I find that the taxonomic and environmental signals of n-alkane patterns are entangled, especially in leaf n-alkanes. Soil n-alkane patterns reflect environmental conditions at the site, but the results cannot rule out a taxonomic signal in soil n-alkane patterns. I also find that, as the source material degrades (leaves), the n-alkane patterns are altered. Although the n-alkane signal is recognizable as having plant origin, there is a reduction in n-alkane pattern variability and the metric for degradation becomes an increasingly important descriptor of the n-alkane pattern shifts observed in soils and sediments. I find evidence that the metric for degradation can be used as proxy for past environmental change, but the application of this n-alkane signal proxy is not straightforward. Finally, I find there is little understanding of how much extraction and measurement protocols contribute to the n-alkane pattern variability and what implications this has on interpretations of the n-alkane signal.
If you think you might fulfill all the criteria for application, and are interested in conducting a PhD on a “ecology of the past” related theme at the University of Amsterdam, please do not hesitate to get in contact. I am then happy to check eligibility and discuss if your skill set and interests would be appropriate to apply for a PhD scholarship with us. I would be delighted if we would be able to support an applicant to this scheme.
Deadline for applications: 21 May 2024 (but please get in contact as soon as possible so that we can make the relevant eligibility checks and discuss ideas).
The Mapping Ancient Africa (MAA) special issue of Quaternary International (QI) will open for submission on 30 April and will close 30 July 2024. To submit your article go to the QI submission portal and click “submit new article”, you will then be asked to “select article type”. From the drop down list select “SI: Mapping Ancient Africa”. This will ensure that your manuscript is directed to the guest editorial team. Submissions should follow the standard QI guideline (click here for details) and take account of the advice for submission to this special issue (click here for details).
The special issue is centered around work and papers presented in the MAA Rome workshop and sessions at the INQUA Rome congress (session 1, session 2), however, if you have a manuscript that you think would be appropriate for inclusion given the research themes of the project please also consider submitting. If you have any questions feel free to contact the editorial team in advance.
Using phytolith analysis to detect palm enrichment in AmazoniaNina Witteveen (University of Amsterdam)
Starch grains as indicators of plant food consumption in Neanderthals and Early Modern HumansAmanda Henry (University of Leiden)
Paleoenvironmental history of an archaeological lagoon in Central Italy: Insights from diatom analysisMajoi Nacimiento, Teye Aukes & Jan Sevink (University of Amsterdam)
15:45-17:30 – Laboratory activities
Advances in topical phytolith identificationNina Witteveen (University of Amsterdam)
Finding Suitable Grounds – combining the on/off site approach through phytolith investigation in FlevolandAna Smuk (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)
The Southern African Society for Quaternary Research (SASQUA) is hosting its 24th congress 19-24 May 2024 in the Cango Valley, South Africa. The congress will bring together scientists working on all aspects of the Quaternary in southern Africa. Poster and oral presentations possible.
Abstract submission and student support application deadline: 31 March 2024
The 15th Mapping Ancient Africa seminar took place online on Friday 15th March 2024. The seminar was delivered by Bruk Lemma (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany; Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute – EBI). In the seminar Bruk presented recent advances made in the application of biomarker and stable isotope techniques in revealing the climate dynamics of the Bale Mountains in Ethiopia. He showed that it is possible to identify some plant types using these approaches, but that degradation of the signal in the sedimentary environment is possible.
Ecology of the past 