Project Team
Ralph Fyfe is Professor of Geospatial Information at University of Plymouth. His research is centred on environmental change and archaeology through the Holocene, predominantly (but not exclusively) through pollen-analytical methods. His work primarily focuses on Europe, working on projects in Britain and Ireland, Scandinavia and Italy. He was been a member of the Nordforsk-funded POLLANDCAL (POLlen-LANDscape CALibration) and LANDCLIM (Land-climate interactions) networks, and is currently coordinating efforts to generate state-of-the-art knowledge of Europe-wide Holocene land cover as part of the Past Global Changes (PAGES) LANDCOVER6K working group.
Jessie Woodbridge is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow on the “Biodiversity, habitat dynamics and human land-use change over multi-millennial time scales” project at the University of Plymouth. Jessie also worked on the "Changing the face of the Mediterranean: land cover and population since the advent of farming" and “Deforesting Europe” projects at the University of Plymouth. This research aimed to reconstruct changes in European land-cover over long (i.e. multi-centennial) timescales using pollen data. Jessie's research background is focussed on reconstruction of Holocene palaeoenvironmental change using palaeoecological techniques based on peat and lake-sediment archives. Her PhD research focussed on diatom-inferred Eastern Mediterranean palaeoclimate.
Ruth Pelling is a Senior Archaeobotanist at Historic England
with specialisms in macrofossils, wood and charcoal analyses. Ruth will have
responsibility for the collation and synthesis of archaeobotanical records
within the project contributing her specialist knowledge as an archaeobotanist
with extensive experience on the collation and analysis of archaeobotanical
data. This includes methodologies and
approaches to deriving land-use. Ruth’s
position and responsibilities at Historic England include coordination of a
network of archaeobotanists from across the UK.
Anne de Vareilles is
a Post-Doctoral Research Associate working with Ruth Pelling on
the collation and synthesis of archaeobotanical records. Anne is an
archaeobotanist with extensive experience in macrofossils and large-scale data
compilation and analysis. Anne has a strong background of working with British
material from across the Holocene and in all states of preservation. She has
also worked on Neolithic macrofossils from the Balkans for her PhD (EUROFARM:
Transmission of innovations: comparison and modelling of early farming and
associated technologies in Europe, UCL), and on remains from China (Comparative
Pathways to Agriculture, UCL) as well as India (Asia Beyond Boundaries, SOAS).
David Smith is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental
Archaeology at the University of Birmingham. David’s main research interests
concern the interpretation of insect remains from the archaeological record. He
uses insect remains to investigate landscape and land-use change as well as
living conditions in archaeological settlements. David has over 25 years’
experience providing commercial consultancy on insect remains from a range of
archaeological sites in the UK and abroad.
