Seminars with external speakers will be once or twice a month. On other weeks, seminars are held by the internal AMGC researchers, students, and guests.
For more information or to propose speakers, please contact Axel Cerón González, Charlotte Van Riet, Oriana Chiappa, Vendula Smolikova or Maxwell Thiemens who are in charge of the seminar organisation.
PROGRAM 2025-2026
THURSDAY 9 October 2025, 4 PM CET, Room 10G
Dr. Katharina Ameli
Lecturer at the Institue for Sociology and coordinator at the Interdisciplinary Center for Animal Welfare Research at Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen
Multispecies ethnography in animal-assisted services
Following professor Tim Ingold’s thought-provoking seminar in March, our research group continues the conversation on more-than-human approaches with a focus on multispecies ethnography. Dr. Katharina Ameli will share with us insights from her work on animal-assisted services, inviting us to consider how non-human beings actively shape social worlds.
Multispecies ethnography offers an innovative methodological framework for researching animal-assisted services by understanding human-animal interactions not only as functional relationships, but as reciprocal, socially and materially embedded practices. Instead of viewing animals as objects of human care, this approach places their agency, perceptual worlds, and individual contributions at the center of analysis. The talk will address the inclusion of animals within multispecies ethnography in animal-assisted services.
THURSDAY 06 November 2025
Prof. Alison Beach
Professor in Medieval History at University of St. Andrews
Medieval Work as Embodied Experience: The Case of ELS215 from Bone to Biomolecule
Alison Beach is a professor in Medieval history at the School of History, University of St. Andrews, UK. In this seminar, Alison will present a historical osteobiography of a female individual (burial designation ELS215) buried in the medieval monastic cemetery of Elstow Abbey (Bedfordshire, UK) in the twelfth or thirteenth century. Combining burial topography, osteological analysis, dental calculus analysis, proteomics, and stable isotope analysis, I will venture an integrated story of a medieval woman who both performed manual work within her community and experienced extreme physical impairment from advanced tuberculosis myelitis (Pott’s disease). I will offer evidence of the type of manual work in ELS215 engaged, as well as her diet, oral health, and ingestion of medicinal materials. This case study is part of the AHRC-funded project Word of Mouth: Embodied Stories of Premodern Women at Work. The Word of Mouth project seeks to recover, contextualise, and synthesise women’s stories, providing an unprecedentedly fine-grained picture of women’s work and occupational health in monastic contexts.
THURSDAY 13 November 2025
Dr. Jonathan Goldenberg
Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oslo
SHARKSense: Reading the ocean through the colors of sharks
Pollution is one of the most pervasive threats to biodiversity, yet assessing its ecological impact remains costly and complex. In the SHARKSense project, we explore an unconventional but promising bioindicator: skin darkness. Sharks, as meso-apex predators, accumulate heavy metals from both their environment and the food chain. Intriguingly, melanin - a pigment responsible for dark coloration - can bind and sequester these toxic compounds. Could pollution be driving the evolution of darker-skinned individuals?
SHARKSense investigates this question by integrating computer vision, evolutionary biology, biochemistry, and fieldwork to uncover correlations between melanin deposition, skin darkness, and pollution. By spanning taxa, geography, and time, we aim to determine whether integument color can serve as a reliable, non-invasive proxy for ecosystem health, beginning with a foundational framework that links pigmentation patterns to environmental stressors. This talk will introduce SHARKSense, present early findings, and discuss how pigmentation might offer a scalable tool for ecological monitoring, bridging molecular mechanisms with conservation strategy.
THURSDAY 22 January 2026, 4 PM CET, Room 10G
Prof. Dr. Gabriele Macho
Professor in Bioarchaeology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Introducing PLIODIS: Pliocene Hominin Dispersal to southern Africa - Choice or Chance?
PLIODIS is an ERC Advanced Grant project that addresses a key question in human evolution: did early hominins disperse into temperate southern Africa during the Pliocene through active adaptive choice, or were they passively driven by tectonic and climatic forces? Although hominins evolved in tropical Africa around six million years ago, evidence for their presence in southern Africa by ~3.7 million years ago raises important questions about the timing and nature of early hominin adaptability. PLIODIS applies a multidisciplinary framework integrating palaeoclimatology, geomorphology, paleoecology, functional morphology, biomechanics, (zoo)archaeology, and evolutionary theory to reconstruct environmental dynamics and population processes during the Pliocene. Focusing on key Plio-Pleistocene sites in southern and eastern Africa, the project investigates whether early hominin populations were environmentally constrained, geographically isolated, or already capable of colonizing more variable temperate environments. By doing so, PLIODIS seeks to identify when the adaptive flexibility that later enabled Homo to disperse beyond Africa first emerged, potentially predating the origin of the genus Homo.
THURSDAY 5 February 2026, 4 PM CET, Room 10G
Prof. Dr. Ronny Schönberg
Professor for Isotope Geochemistry at the University of Tübingen
The mode and timing of the appearance of early Earth's atmospheric oxygen
In this talk I will present an overview of important advances made by the international science community and my own research group regarding the oxidation of Earth’s atmosphere-hydrosphere system from the Mesoarchaean to the Paleoproterozoic. This process has not only ultimately influenced and shaped the development of life on our planet, but it also led to Earth’s first low-latitude glaciations in the Paleoproterozoic, some probably being similar in extent to the Sturtian and Marinoan Snowball Earth Events of the Neoproterozoic. The Paleoproterozoic glaciation events eventually led to a rebound with increased marine bio-productivity during the 2.2 Ga Lomagundi Event with proposed atmospheric oxygen levels similar to today. I will discuss the timing and mode of this early atmospheric oxidation and point out problems and questions that so far elude our understanding.
THURSDAY 19 February 2026, 4 PM CET, Room 10G
Dries Vergouwen
AMGC PhD Candidate
Revealing the Senne: a hidden landmark in the historical center of Brussels
The Senne has been a key driver of Brussels’ environmental and urban history, functioning as a dynamic structuring element in the city’s changing landscape. Over time, the river supplied water and food resources, supported transport and trade, and increasingly served as an outlet for waste. Its banks hosted diverse infrastructure, including mills, breweries, fishponds, fortifications, and harbour installations. As urbanisation intensified, the Senne and its tributaries were progressively reshaped through both natural processes and human intervention, fundamentally transforming the river valley. In this presentation, Dries will share the project’s first results and discuss the methods used to integrate archaeological, historical, geological, and environmental evidence, from GIS analysis (QGIS and ArcGIS) to 3D modelling and geological reconstruction using RockWorks.
Lucrezia Buoli
AMGC Assistant Researcher
(Peri-) Urban Dark Earth in Brussels
Although archaeology and the natural sciences have long been closely connected, the integration of environmental studies into urban archaeology in Europe developed mainly at the end of the twentieth century. Geoarchaeology subsequently became a key approach for investigating stratigraphy and depositional processes, with increasing attention to sediments embedding archaeological artefacts. This seminar focuses on Dark Earths—thick and homogeneous stratigraphic units commonly found in Roman and post-Roman contexts that result from the interaction between human activity and natural depositional processes. An overview of Dark Earths and the principal geoarchaeological methods used to study them will be presented, with particular attention to the Dark Earths of Brussels. A case study will be presented to show that Dark Earths, contrary to what was previously thought, also occur outside urban environments.
Meihui Li
AMGC PhD Candidate
Open Spaces Are Not Empty!
Urban archaeology has long privileged buildings and standing structures, often leaving open spaces—vacant lots, marginal grounds, and marketplaces—understudied and undervalued. Yet these “in-between” areas are integral to urban cultural heritage and to how towns were organised, used, and maintained over time. This talk argues that urban soils, especially Urban Dark Earth (UDE), provide a powerful archive for recovering the histories of such spaces when architecture is absent or fragmentary. Using soil micromorphology as a high-resolution method, I present a comparative study of two open-space types: an urban wasteland and a marketplace context. By tracing micro-stratification, anthropogenic inputs, reworking signatures, and soil-formation overprints, the comparison reveals distinct depositional pathways and patterns of land use and management. The results show why micromorphology is essential for moving urban archaeology beyond the macro-scale and for integrating open spaces into urban narratives.
THURSDAY 13 March 2026, 4 PM CET, Room 10G
Dr. Trygve Prestgard
AMGC Post-doctoral researcher
Julius Pesola
AMGC PhD candidate
Micrometeorites are cosmic dust particles formed during asteroid collisions and cometary sublimation that survived atmospheric entry and accreted to Earth. In this seminar I will present results from two projects investigating modern and ancient micrometeorites. The Disko Bay (west Greenland) collection is the first Arctic sediment trap-based micrometeorite collection, complementing the numerous existing Antarctic collections. To date >200 particles were recovered from five sediment traps, providing better geographic coverage of the modern micrometeorite flux. The Triassic was a geologic period bookended by catastrophic extinction events. Fossil micrometeorites were extracted from Triassic-Jurassic boundary limestones from Montenegro, while work is currently underway on Permian-Triassic boundary and Late-Triassic samples. SEM-EDS characterisation revealed Montenegro micrometeorites to be almost completely featureless and oxidised, underscoring the importance of favourable preservation conditions in the study of fossil micrometeorites.
Deepak Binu Beena
AMGC PhD candidate
Micrometeorites from past to present
Extraterrestrial dust has been continuously delivered to Earth for millions of years, and particles that survive atmospheric entry and reach the surface are known as micrometeorites. This study investigates modern micrometeorites collected from Antarctica and fossil micrometeorites extracted by dissolving Phanerozoic carbonate rocks. Samples from the Ellsworth Mountains in West Antarctica revealed a previously unidentified sulfur-rich micrometeorite. Carbonate rocks from three contrasting geological settings—a stable sedimentary basin, a region affected by prolonged volcanic activity, and a tectonically active Himalayan basin—are also being dissolved to recover fossil micrometeorites. In addition to conventional SEM–EDS analysis, micro-XRF is evaluated as a non-destructive method for characterizing these particles.
THURSDAY 16 April 2026, 4 PM CET, Room 10G
Juan Antolinos
PhD researcher at the University of Burgos
Juan is a PhD researcher at the University of Burgos. His research focus is on dietary and mobility changes in herbivores from the site of Sierra of Atapuerca, Spain.
Hannah Leonard
AMGC PhD candidate
Hannah is a PhD researcher and part of the Leap (Learning from the Past) project. She studies the impact of various ka events happening in the Mesolithic to Bronze Age, by performing isotope analysis on both cremated and inhumated remains.
THURSDAY 30 April 2026, 4 PM CET, Room 10G
Prof. Dr. Andreas Pack
Professor at Georg-August-University Göttingen
Using triple oxygen isotopes for atmospheric research and animal physiology
Triple oxygen isotope measurements are a powerful tool for investigating processes that cannot be resolved using conventional stable isotope analyses alone. This seminar will introduce the principles of triple oxygen isotope systematics and demonstrate how variations in oxygen isotope compositions provide unique insights into both atmospheric chemistry and biological processes. Drawing on recent advances in analytical techniques and applications, the presentation will explore how triple oxygen isotope signatures record photochemical reactions in the atmosphere, enabling improved understanding of oxygen cycling, carbon dioxide exchange, and past environmental conditions. The seminar will also highlight the growing use of this approach in animal physiology, where oxygen isotope anomalies preserved in body tissues offer new perspectives on metabolic pathways, respiration, water balance, and physiological adaptation. By integrating concepts from geochemistry, atmospheric science, and biology, the seminar illustrates how high-precision isotope measurements are expanding our ability to trace complex natural processes across disciplines, opening new avenues for research into Earth's atmosphere and living systems.
THURSDAY 7 May 2026, 4 PM CET, Room 10G
Axel Céron González
AMGC & KU Leuven PhD candidate
Geoarchaeology of agricultural terraces in Italy
The Castle of Montefalco (11th to 14th century A.D.) in central Italy is situated within a karst environment, surrounded by a system of walled terraces dating back to the Modern period and possibly earlier. The construction of terraces reflects human efforts in creating flat land in mountainous regions for farming or agroforestry. An interdisciplinary geoarchaeological approach has been developed with applicability across various scales, from microscopic to landscape level. Field observations indicate that the terrace walls were built in contact with the limestone bedrock and follow specific surface karst features and relict soils. The geoarchaeological reconstruction of terrace fillings and maintenance suggests the addition of reworked soils and rock fragments, either cherts or limestones. The terrace soils remain biologically active and are continuously bioturbated, as observed at the microscale. The luminescence stratigraphy shows normal net OSL signal-depth progression, suggesting natural, gradual sedimentation behind the terrace walls.
Andrei Kedich
AMGC & KU Leuven PhD candidate
Detection of agricultural terraces at large scales in Cyprus
Terraced landscapes are among the most prominent human-made landforms in the Mediterranean, playing a crucial role in agriculture, erosion control, and soil conservation, while also contributing to the region’s cultural heritage. However, large-scale and systematic assessments of their occurrence remain limited. This study introduces a reproducible and computationally efficient framework for object-based detection and classification of agricultural terraces using freely available geospatial data. The framework integrates image segmentation with a two-stage machine-learning-based classification and is demonstrated for Cyprus, a representative Mediterranean island with diverse terrace morphologies. The terrace detection model achieved a Receiver Operating Characteristic Area Under the Curve (ROC AUC) of 0.86 and a normalized Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC) of 0.71, while the classification model, distinguishing broad, narrow, and reforestation terraces, reached an MCC of 0.75. Applying the model at the island scale resulted in a total predicted terraced area of 693 km² (7.5% of Cyprus). The resulting maps provide the first island-wide overview of terrace occurrence and types in Cyprus, revealing both active and abandoned systems. The framework is transferable to other terrace-rich Mediterranean regions and supports applications in soil erosion modeling and geoarchaeological analysis.
Dr. Dita Auzina
Postdoctoral researcher at the university of Leiden
Geoarchaeology of Rocky Mounds in Nicaragua
The Aguas Buenas site in central Nicaragua represents a distinctive form of pre-Hispanic monumentality in southern Central America. Comprising over 370 earthen and stone mounds arranged in a semicircle, it reflects collective construction without political centralization. Excavations of 20 mounds in 2025 combined soil micromorphology, geochemical sampling, and portable optically stimulated luminescence (pOSL) profiling to reconstruct building sequences. Results indicate repeated mound construction and abandonment shaped by human and natural processes. Contrasting pink and white rhyolite enhanced the visibility of the site’s geometry, while volcanic ashes beneath the mounds suggest environmental events that may have inspired the site’s construction.
THURSDAY 21 May 2026, 4 PM CET, Room 10G
Dr. Dobereiner Chala-Aldana
Postdoctoral researcher at the Universidad de Granada, Spain
Tracing Prehistoric Mobility in Southern Iberia: What Strontium Isotopes Can (and Can’t) Tell Us
How reliable are strontium-based models for tracing prehistoric mobility in geologically complex regions? Over the last decades, isotopic approaches to the study of human mobility have become a central tool in prehistoric archaeology. Among these, strontium isotopes—particularly 87Sr/86Sr ratios and their environmental distribution—have been widely used to establish baseline values and to model potential surfaces across which humans and animals moved.
However, the construction of bioavailable strontium isotope distribution models (isoscapes) is far from methodologically neutral. Different modelling strategies and sampling decisions can substantially shape archaeological interpretations of mobility, influencing how provenance, movement patterns, and spatial ranges are understood. Moreover, although isotopic data provide powerful constraints on questions of provenance and movement, mobility analyses cannot rely on isotopes alone. Robust interpretations require the integration of strontium isoscapes with complementary geographical, archaeological, and environmental information.
This seminar presents recent research conducted in the southern Iberian Peninsula, a region characterised by pronounced geological complexity. Focusing on Copper and Bronze Age contexts, it will showcase both new empirical results and ongoing methodological developments in strontium isoscape modelling and short-range mobility analysis. Through a series of case studies, the talk will highlight the interpretive potential—and the limitations—of isotopic approaches, and argue for integrated, multiscalar frameworks that move beyond simplified local/non-local dichotomies toward a more nuanced understanding of prehistoric mobility ranges.
THURSDAY 4 June 2026, 4 PM CET, Room 10G
Anneminne Frère
AMGC PhD candidate
How ancient cremation practices inspire contemporary thinking about cremation
Cremation has a long history in Belgium, with evidence dating back more than 9,000 years. Following a decline after the rise of Christianity, cremation has once again become the dominant funerary practice in Belgium since 2012. In this presentation, I will discuss how cremation is organised and experienced in contemporary Belgium and explore how archaeological evidence can contribute to current conversations about death, cremation, and the treatment of human remains, as well as inspire reflection on contemporary assumptions and practices. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with employees of crematoria (N= 11) and adults living in Flanders (N= 18), contemporary cremation practices are explored alongside perceptions of practices frequently encountered in archaeological contexts, including cremation on an open pyre, the joint cremation of humans and animals, the mingling of ashes, and the division of ashes across multiple urns. By bringing together sociological and archaeological perspectives, this seminar demonstrates how archaeological evidence can challenge contemporary understandings of death, disposal of the dead, and remembrance. It highlights the value of interdisciplinary dialogue in encouraging critical reflection on present-day cremation practices and the diverse ways in which societies, past and present, engage with the dead.
Camille Lacorne
AMGC PhD candidate
ECO-EDGE: Ecological Imperialism on the Edge of Europe
European imperialism profoundly reshaped global ecosystems. Yet, the ecological impact of colonization remains poorly understood. Madeira, first settled by the Portuguese in the 1420s, provides a unique case study to examine how European occupation transformed the ecosystem of a previously uninhabited island. While we know that the arrival of humans triggered significant environmental change, including the introduction of non-native mammals and the disappearance of endemic birds, direct evidence of these shifts remains scarce. The ECO-EDGE project fills this gap by analysing faunal remains from 15 Madeiran colonial sites dating from the 15th to the 19th century. Using zooarchaeological methods and carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses, ECO-EDGE identifies changes in native and non-native animal diversity and ecological niche occupation, and uncovers the timing and mechanisms of these changes. The results will improve our understanding of the ecological history of Madeira and how the regional faunal community was (un)intentionally transformed by five centuries of Portuguese occupation. By comparing the results with data from islands that experienced similar trajectories, this project will elucidate the characteristics of European colonization as a major environmental driver on a global scale. Finally, this study will inform policymakers in biodiversity conservation by providing historical insights into ecosystem resilience and human-induced environmental change.
THURSDAY 11 June 2026, 4 PM CET, Room 10G
Prof. Dr. Pieter Vermeesch
Professor of Geochronology at University College London
Did Australopithecus africanus live 2 or 4 million years ago?
The Taung Child is an early human fossil discovered in South Africa by Raymond Dart in 1924. It is the holotype of Australopithecus africanus and provided the first fossil evidence in support of Darwin’s hypothesis that humans originated in Africa. As such, the Taung Child is one of the most significant fossils in the history of paleoanthropology. Yet, a century after its discovery, its precise age remains uncertain.
Since the discovery of the Taung Child, numerous additional australopithecine fossils have been found across southern and eastern Africa. Fossils from eastern Africa (for example, Lucy) can be dated relatively straightforwardly using K–Ar geochronology of the volcanic layers that bracket them. In contrast, dating southern African fossils is far more challenging due to the absence of nearby volcanic deposits. Two methodological breakthroughs introduced roughly two decades ago appeared to offer a solution to this problem, but the resulting age estimates are contradictory. Cosmogenic-nuclide dating yields ages of approximately 3.5–4 million years, comparable to those of eastern African fossils, whereas U–Pb dating suggests much younger ages of only 2–2.5 million years.
This discrepancy has led to a heated debate between proponents of cosmogenic-nuclide and U–Pb dating. Resolving the conflict requires careful examination of the mathematical and statistical foundations of both methods. Published U–Pb ages are typically based on the 206Pb/238U ratio, which necessitates a correction for any initial disequilibrium between 234U and 238U. Beyond about 2 Ma, the uncertainty associated with this disequilibrium correction exceeds the magnitude of the correction itself, potentially accounting for the entire discrepancy with the cosmogenic-nuclide ages. An alternative approach, based on the decay of 235U to 207Pb, does not require a substantial disequilibrium correction. Preliminary results applying the 235U–207Pb method to hominin-bearing carbonate deposits at Taung, Hoogland, and Malapa yield ages consistent with those obtained from cosmogenic-nuclide dating.