Research
My work can be generally divided to three main interlinked research directions
(click for more information):
Archaeology
Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers
Geo-Ethnoarchaeology
One of the defining aspects of humanity is our ability to adapt to new and changing environments through social behaviour, technological innovation and exploitation of natural resources. However, the evidence for human activity in the deep past as well as for the nature of the paleo-environmental are not so easily detected due to the nature of human activity and decay processes.
I analyse human exploitation of natural resources that sheds light on human technology and ecological adaptation. I use spatial analysis to study people’s use of space and what it reveals about their social behaviour. I study soils, sediments, micro-botanical remains and chemical residues to reconstruct past landscape, vegetation and climate. In order to assure the integrity of the archaeological context, I examine how the environmental conditions and post-depositional processes influence the formation and preservation of archaeological materials.
High Resolution Approach and why it is important to study site formation processes?
The archaeological method is largely based on the association of archaeological materials recovered through excavation with different stratigraphic layers with each layer representing an episode of material deposition. Such episodes may relate to natural processes of sedimentation and/or to human activity that result in material accumulations. But while human activity is happening in scales of minutes, days or years, archaeological layers identified in Palaeolithic sites and dated by radiometric methods usually represent hundreds if not thousands of years. This means that each archaeological layer is composed of multiple episodes of human action that are rarely distinguishable. In addition, archaeological deposits experience different post-depositional taphonomic processes (e.g., animals and plants activity and changes within chemical environments) that may alter the archaeological record and greatly affect archaeological interpretation. Understanding the entire sequence of archaeological site formation processes from the initial occupation of the site followed by millennia of taphonomic processes is crucial in establishing the integrity of archaeological records before any interpretation. In order to identify episodes that better represent the scale of human behaviour it is essential to increase our resolution of the archaeological record by:
Investigate the less-studied microscopic and chemical scales to detect invisible materials deposited by human behaviour (e.g. ash particles, micro-botanical remains, fragments of bones and lithics, indicative sets of chemicals and the utilisation or modification of sediments, soils, rocks and minerals).
Provide a multi-scalar spatial analysis of the distribution of different evidence for human activity.
Understand post-depositional processes to adequately evaluate the state of preservation and integrity of archaeological context.
It is only by developing a high-resolution approach based on a multi-proxy, multi-scalar analysis of the entire range of archaeological site formation processes, that reliable archaeological interpretations are possible, providing new types of evidence, as well as new opportunities for synthesis and theory.
