Core Research Theme: Human Palaeoecology

Human Palaeoecology at Aberdeen engages with advancing methodological and empirical palaeoecological research related to the origin, nature and rate of long-term environmental and climatic changes and its general or specific links to human response, adaptation behaviour and activity.

Bio-cultural co-evolutionary frameworks are also employed to examine the long-term temporal context of human-environment interactions using approaches involving geoarchaeology, bioarchaeology, biomolecules, advanced morphometrics and evolutionary theory. Thus, wholly new insights into the biology and process of domestication, commensalism and the spread of early farmers are also major research foci within this Theme, along with reconstructing past diet, health and living conditions.

Selected Current Research Projects:

• Isotope Analysis at St. Nicholas Kirk, Aberdeen: Diet, Health and Mobility in a Medieval Maritime Society
• Animal Husbandry in the Intertidal Zone: A Stable Isotope Approach to Changing Subsistence Strategies in the Belgian Coastal Plain
• Dietary Change and Maritime Adaptations in Prehistoric North-West Alaska
• Palaeobiogeography and Palaeoecology of late Pleistocene Herbivores of Northern Europe
• The Vatnsfjörður Project: Evolving Power in an Evolving Landscape