Ghent University

Post-Doc, Archaeology

UGent 'Special Research Fund' (BOF) Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. Project: "Exchange Networks and Ecological Change in Early Holocene northwest Europe"

About

I am currently undertaking postdoctoral research on the social and ecological responses of hunter-gatherers to environmental change at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in the southern North Sea basin. This research investigates the development and maintenance of long-distance quartzite exchange networks and their role in lithic technological organization systems. Along with colleagues from the UGent Departments of Geology and Analytical Chemistry, this research has developed a multi-method framework for the sourcing of quartzites (petrography, SEM-EDX, cathodoluminescence, computerized tomography, PN- and LA-ICP-MS). Having sourced two different varieties of quartzite to different facies of the same geological formation in central Belgium, I am currently compiling a comprehensive GIS database for all finds of these two raw material types in Mesolithic sites between the Paris Basin and North Sea basin. These typological analyses will help to understand the diachronic changes in the distribution and utilization (lithic 'reduction junctures') of these quartzites and will yield insight on the role of intra- and inter-regional ecological variability in the organization of Mesolithic lithic technology in this region. They form the basis of further technological (nodule and refitting) analyses into Mesolithic chipped stone industries, and the different ways in which 'exotic' raw materials were utilized alongside the many different kinds and qualities of flint that were abundant through much of this region. This research investigates the relationships between hunter-gatherer socioecological systems, raw material exchange networks, and lithic technological skill acquisition.

This research is also focusing on the role of rapid climate change events during the Early Holocene on hunter-gatherer socioecological and cultural change. I am particularly interested in the relationship between vegetation response times to abrupt climate change and how this would have impacted hunter-gatherer social organization systems. The project investigates whether long-distance raw material exchange networks worked to establish and maintain inter-regional social interaction/information networks that served as 'safety nets' which facilitated hunter-gatherer adaptations during periods of environmental stress and uncertainty.

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