About

Socio-ecological research in anthropology has been gaining attention thanks to widening interdisciplinary research designs. Bringing social scientists with engineers and natural scientists allows us to address more complex problems, which are dynamic and time-transgressive.

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The issue of past human adaptive responses in the face of climatic and environmental changes has many dimensions and it is a research that requires collaboration from diverse fields. In my research, I apply paleoclimate models to quantify past climatic parameters, and work with geologists and geochemists to compare the results of paleoclimate models with paleoenvironmental proxy records such as pollen and isotope.

 

I use the results of paleoclimate models and site-based archaeological data to build agent-based models. These simulations replicate past environmental, economic, and social dynamics; such simulations enable us to test how humans might have behaved under different conditions. Consequently, agent-based models turn archaeology into a field of research where controlled experiments are possible.

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In agent-based models, my research seeks to understand the temporal changes in the productivity of subsistence patterns and how this impacts the human population. Additionally, anthropogenic impacts such as erosion-deposition of sediments are also simulated. In collaboration with geomorphologists, I aim to understand how surface processes might have shifted when climate change was coupled with anthropogenic transformations of any landscape.