Research Projects

New and integrated statistical approaches to estimate Late Pleistocene climate changes through the study of fossil small vertebrates

Supervisors: Dr Claudio Berto

Host Institution: Uniwersytet Warszawski, Faculty of Archaeology (Poland)

Phd enrolment: Uniwersytet Warszawski Interdisciplinary Doctoral School (Poland)

Objectives:

  1. To develop climate models that estimate the major parameters (e.g. MAT, MAP, etc.), as well as their probability distribution, starting from Late Pleistocene small vertebrate assemblages.
  2. To link those models to a solid chronological framework thanks to direct radiocarbon dates datasets on small vertebrates and thanks to rodent voles aDNA chronological estimation datasets.
  3. To verify and compare the obtained data with major continental and marine records (e.g. Oxygen Isotopes Compositions or Pollen sequences) as well as other results from the same small mammal assemblages (e.g. isotope records, and other climatic reconstruction methods).

Expected results:

  1. New and verified data that will enhance the main climatic oscillations related to the main Late Pleistocene paleontological and archaeological sequences in Europe.
  2. To set up a robust method for estimating past climatic records from small vertebrate assemblages.
  3. To create free R and Stan (or similar language) scripts that allow to estimate the climate parameters.

Planned secondment(s):

IPHES-CERCA specialization in Prehistory will offer to the DC an ideal context for the integration of climate models in archaeological studies. Dr. López-Garcia will act as co-supervisor during a secondment spanning from 2 to 6 months. The secondment period will begin after the third month of the second year of the DC contract. The dates will be subject to changes based on the progress of the IRP.