I am Professor of Archaeology and Director for the Institute for the Modelling of Socio-Environmental Transitions (IMSET). My research specialisms lay in environmental archaeology and I have a focus on how societies in the past interacted with their environment; how they responded to past climate and environmental change; and what we can learn from this that can inform on adaptation strategies to our current climate change crisis.
I have worked extensively in the Neolithic of southwest Asia, exploring how and why people made the transition from mobile hunter-gatherers to sedentary farmers. I am interested in the impact that this change in lifestyle had on the environment-particularly in relation to landscape change and biodiversity loss-and also how this transition altered our societal structure and relationship with material culture.
I have an undergraduate degree in Archaeology from the University of Bristol and an M. Phil and Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge.

Research

I am currently involved in a number of research projects involving the Neolithic of southwest Asia.

I have recently been awarded an AHRC, Early Career grant in collaboration with Dr Carol Palmer (CBRL), Prof John Grattan (University of Aberystwyth) and Dr Helen Smith (Bournemouth University). The aim of this project is to develop a combined phytolith and geochemical method to help us understand how space was used in early Neolithic sites through the ethnographic analysis of Bedouin camp sites and traditionally built villages in Jordan (http://research.bournemouth.ac.uk/2014/07/inea-project-2/).

I work on the WF16 project (a PPNA site in southern Jordan), the Eastern Fertile Crescent Prehistory Project (EFEC) which explores the transition from foraging to farming in the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq, the Boncuklu Project and the Çatalhöyük Project.

Publications

Grants

Outreach & engagement

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