CHES Associate Member
- Ilaria Patania
- Postdoctoral Associate, Dept. Anthropology
- ACADEMIC BIOGRAPHY:
Boston Univeristy: PhD 2017, Archaeology, Geoarchaeology, Upper Palaeolithic, China
Dissertation Title: “Site Formation Processes and Site Use in the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene: Micromorphology and FTIR Analysis at the Cave Sites of Xianrendong and Yuchanyan”
- CURRENT PROJECTS:
- RESEARCH INTERESTS:
I am an environmental archaeologist specializing in hunter-gatherer societies and human migrations. I conduct both land and underwater work using a multi-scalar geoarchaeological approach. My research is aimed at understanding human-environment feedback and contextualizing biological and socio-cultural adaptive strategies of Homo. I am particularly interested in human adaptation to marginal environments and issues of sustainability of human occupation in extreme and fragile ecosystems. My project, Early Occupation of Sicily (EOS), focuses on reconstructing how human arrival and climate change shaped the ecosystems of Sicily, the first island to be colonized in the Mediterranean at ~17kya. My broader scope with EOS is to investigate the role of Mediterranean islands in Eurasian human dispersal and shed light on the anthropogenic impacts on islands as natural laboratories.