P.W. (Pir) Hoebe, MA

PhD project

Data before the Deluge: A Big Data approach to Northwest European hunter-gatherers and their response to climatic events and environmental catastrophes.

As archaeological data are increasing exponentially, researchers are looking more often at how Big Data approaches can provide new ways of looking at the past at large geographical and temporal scales. This project will take advantage of the availability of large palaeo-environmental and archaeological data repositories in order to better understand human responses to postglacial climate change. The Late Glacial and Early Holocene are characterized by stark climate fluctuations caused by melting icecaps after the last ice age. Hunter gatherers in northwest Europe had to adapt to dramatic changes to their environment and intermittent sea-level rise that eventually inundated Doggerland (between mainland Europe and Britain). How are human responses to these changes reflected in our archaeological data?