Archival approaches to environment and lifeways: investigating plant-use at Neolithic Abu Hureyra, Syria, 8800 - 6000 cal. BC

 My PhD research investigates plant-use and human-environment interactions in early farming communities in the Near East drawing on archived environmental archaeological material from Abu Hureyra in Northern Syria, one of the oldest and largest pre-pottery Neolithic farming "megasites". This is achieved through multi-proxy, integrated analysis of phytoliths and charcoal, as well as the identification of faecal spherulites and GC-MS of sediments to assess if dung may have been a depositional pathway of some of the plant remains from the site. This study is funded by the AHRC SWW DTP. I am also analysing comparative samples from the Neolithic site of Bestansur, Iraqi Kurdistan, with the support of the ERC funded MENTICA project.

Links:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kate_Dudgeon2

About Me:

I graduated with a BSc in Geography and Anthropology (First Class Honours) from Oxford Brookes University in 2013. After spending several years working in education in the UK, Kuwait and China, I embarked on the MSc course in Environmental Archaeology (Distinction) at the University of Reading. It was during this time, I began working with material from the Abu Hureyra archive stored in Reading, for my dissertation, which I am continuing to work with as part of my PhD investigating plant-use during the Neolithic in the Near East.

Research Interests:

• Neolithic Archaeology.
• Near Eastern Archaeology.
• Environmental Archaeology.
• Human-environment interactions.

Research Groups:

Objects, Materials and People

Landscape, Climate and the Lived Environment

Soil Research Centre