The latest ROCEEH Newsletter is available!
🇦🇪 @unesco.org World Heritage site Faya Paleolandscape
📱🎲 Visual Communication Design meets Neanderthals
👩💻 The R package 'roadDB'
🕸️ ROCEEH Symposium “Diversifying networks. How culture infuses the environment”
www.researchgate.net/publication/...
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📢Last call: Submit your presentations to the ROCEEH (co-)hosted sessions at @caaint.bsky.social by November 9th!
S25: How to do ROAD: An Essential Tool for Conducting
Multidisciplinary Studies Related to Human Evolution 🪨💀🦣🌼
S39: Palaeo-GIS 🌍📌
🔗https://2026.caaconference.org/conference-sessions/
Our joint workshop on "Big Data and Human Evolution" between ROCEEH and @boneslab.bsky.social, organized by Giulia Marciani in Ravenna, is in full swing! Great talks, good company and Sangiovese🍷
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The deadline for abstracts for CAA 2026 in Vienna is approaching — only 10 days left!
Showcase your research using the ROAD database in Session S25 "How to do ROAD", or highlight your spatial archaeological studies in Session S39 "Paleo-GIS".
More info: 2026.caaconference.org/conference-s...
CFP for CAA 2026 Vienna is open (deadline Oct 26)! We're back with Session 39: Palaeo-GIS — for GIS in Palaeolithic & prehistoric contexts. Reflective, context-aware papers especially welcome.
🔗 Session info: 2026.caaconference.org/conference-s...
Annoucning two sessions at CAA 2026, Vienna 🎉
📢 Call for papers is open — abstracts due Oct 26, 2025
🧩 S25: How to do ROAD – A Tool for Multidisciplinary Studies in Human Evolution
🗺️ S39: Palaeo-GIS
👉 Details & submission: 2026.caaconference.org/conference-s...
Overview of the 10 km long Jebel Faya mountain and the plain with the archaeological sites in front. The ridge forms a barrier to the Rub’ al Khali desert. (photo: Sharjah Archaeology Authority)
We congratulate the Faya Paleolandscape on its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List! (whc.unesco.org/en/list/1735/). Since its early years, ROCEEH has supported research in Jebel Faya and neighboring sites financially and with personnel.
📷Sharjah Archaeology Authority
Fig. 3. (a) View of the Mgwayiza valley; (b) detail of red jasper outcrop with white quartz veins; (c) knapped materials.
Stream power analysis in relation to chert bearing lithologies in the study area.
Least cost path analysis indicating the optimal transport routes between raw material outcrops and archaeological sites.
A scatterplot of NAA data representing PC1 (40 % var.) and PC2 (21.5 % var.) for all source and artifact samples. Element vectors are shown, representing elements that drive variation between compositional groups.
📄📢New article: Bader, Sommer, Linstädter, Masia, Blessing, Forrester, & MacDonald (2025). Decoding hunter-gatherer-knowledge and selective choice of lithic raw materials during the Middle and Later Stone Age in Eswatini. Journal of Archaeological Science, 180, 106302. doi.org/10.1016/j.ja...
New @roceeh.bsky.social Newsletter #25 with an article on our archaeoligcal + geoscientific work in the Jojosi Dongas!
Seeing Blatten buried again and again, from every angle...
Properly staggering! 😮😱
I strongly recommend visiting @gideys.bsky.social 's talk on the Mai Adrasha archaeological site in Tigrai, to be held in Session S29: "Heritage under bombs - digital methods in the studies of endangered heritage in conflict zones"!
ROCEEH's Jan-Olaf Reschke, Christine Hertler and Christian Sommer @sommergeo.bsky.social spotted at #CAA2025 in Athens!
Hear our talks in Session 14: "Advances in modelling past human ecosystems", held in Room A5 on Thursday, May 8th, 13:45–16:05.
Become my colleague and work with ROCEEH on the ROAD database!
Thank you! Assemblages appear red during the time period associated with their age range, derived from absolute and cultural dating. As time progresses, assemblages change from red to grey, indicating that assemblages were deposited, buried, etc. during that time period.
⏩Fast forward: You can easily create animated maps in R using data from the ROAD database @roceeh.bsky.social. This example shows the appearance (🔴) and deposition (⚫) of ~6000 dated assemblages with stone artifacts between 2,780,000 and 10,000 years BP.
💻 github.com/sommergeo/ro...
Presentation of the sustainability prize for final theses at the university of tübingen 2024. Prof. Potthast announces the winners with images of Marie Geisbusch's work in the background on a screen.
I'm very proud that Marie Luise Geisbusch, whose B.Sc. thesis I supervised, has been awarded the Sustainability Prize of the University of Tübingen for her thesis "Restoration Effects on Peatland Vegetation – Integrating Field and Landsat Data" 🌱🛰️
Figure 3 from the paper showing the Donga landscape, a detail view of a donga cut-and-fill profile, two paleosols, calcrete and a hornfels outcrop.
Ok, first bluesky post here: I'm excited to share our introductory paper on joint archaeology + geomorphology work in the Dongas of Jojosi, KwaZulu-Natal 🇿🇦. doi.org/10.36615/saf...
