Postdoctoral position Climate-induced human responses in the Mediterranean area over the course of...

The Cluster of Excellence ROOTS - Social, Environmental, and Cultural Connectivity in Past Societies at Kiel University (www.cluster-roots.uni-kiel.de ) explores the roots of social, environmental, and cultural phenomena and processes that substantially marked past human development. The ROOTS working group "Socio-environmental Hazards" addresses core questions of how past societies have coped with abrupt climate and environmental change. We invite applications for

a postdoctoral position, Climate-induced human responses in the Mediterranean area over the course of the Holocene

to begin as early as possible. This position is limited for 2 years. The salary is based on the German public pay scale (TV-L 13) if the conditions of the collective agreement are met. The regular weekly working hours are those of a full-time employee (currently 38,7 hours).

Tasks:

The successful candidate will empirically explore the role of major climate hazards for past socio-environmental dynamics. Extensive existing data sets of climate and environmental change and of human activities (landuse, demographic changes, settlement and potential migration/mobility patterns) in a broad circum-Mediterranean context provide an excellent basis to empirically test such hypotheses. Namely quantitative reconstructions of precipitation, temperature and vegetation patterns shall be explored to assess the role and interdependencies of these variables in past scenarios. A multi-proxy approach shall integrate existing and new proxy data from diverse paleoclimatological and -environmental archives, as well as enabling a comparison of reconstructed and model simulated scenarios, and a comparison of climate and archaeological variables.