French National Centre for Scientific Research

Chargé de recherche 1ère classe, Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution

Research Scientist

About

I received my D.Phil. in Geography from the University of Oxford and an MSc in Environmental Archaeology and Palaeoeconomy from the University of Sheffield.

My research primarily focuses on the development and evaluation of new palaeoenvironmental proxy data sources in the arid to sub-humid environments of southern Africa. While this region is highly sensitive to cycles of regional and global environmental change, and has the potential to be a valuable indicator of past climatic variability, only a very few palaeoenvironmental archives have been recovered from the area, and its environmental history remains poorly understood. As a result, models that have been developed to elucidate the dynamics of regional ecosystems, and the environmental context for human and cultural evolution are often contentious, lacking sufficient evidence to make robust interpretations. This paucity of palaeoenvironmental information is largely a function of the region’s climate that often precludes the preservation of organic proxy data sources. My research concentrates on overcoming these obstacles by identifying and analyzing proxy archives that have either not experienced or are resistant to the effects of the region’s pronounced seasonality.

I am presently exploring four primary research themes :

1. The development of fossilised rock hyrax middens as new palaeoenvironmental archive.

2. Studies of sediment cores from coastal wetlands in South Africa.

3. The analysis and evaluation of the aeolian deposits of southern Africa.

4. The creation of a database of proxy information from the southern Africa that is allowing for :

• the visualization and identification of the spatial and temporal patterning of palaeoenvironmental trends,

• the evaluation of hypotheses for the forcing mechanisms of environmental change,

• the development and evaluation of conceptual models that can be used to explore the dynamics and relative importance of different forcing mechanisms on southern African climates, and

• detailed data-model comparisons.

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