Ignacio Mundo, JMA Chairholder (Nov 2020-Feb 2021)
Ignacio Mundo is the holder of the JMA chair of the Cluster of Excellence ROOTS for the next three months until February 3, 2021. He comes from Argentina, where he is an Adjunct Professor in plant biology at the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences of the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo at Mendoza as well as an Adjunct Researcher of CONICET (National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina) at the dendrochronology lab IANIGLA (Argentinean Institute of Snow, Glaciers and Environmental Sciences).
Ignacio studied forestry at the Faculty of Agronomical and Forestry Sciences of the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Argentina). After completing his forestry degree and during his PhD and post-doc at the dendrochronology lab IANIGLA, he focused on the application of dendrochronological techniques for the study of disturbances in Patagonian forests of Southern Argentina. He has been mainly interested in studying fire regimes related to human influence and climate variability and its consequences on forest dynamics. He has used dendrochronological methods to reconstruct the occurrence of disturbances over the last 500 years, implementing annual resolution from scars and other wood traits. In addition, dendrochronological methods have allowed him to better understand the influence of climatic variability on the growth of Patagonian species and forest decline processes.
Furthermore, he also participated in regional reconstructions of temperature, river streamflow and the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), a climate forcing that plays a major role in climate variability in the higher latitudes of South America. During recent years, he has been interested in developing an innovative dendrochronological technique called blue light reflectance (blue intensity) in tree rings as a proxy of wood density. In the framework of this research effort, he has collaborated with European colleagues in an inter-comparison and calibration density study, also adjusting the technique for Patagonian conifers.
In parallel, he has developed interdisciplinary research with Argentinean archaeologists since 2009, developing dendroarchaeological studies on shipwrecks for the first time in Argentina. The purpose of this interdisciplinary research is to provide dendrochronological dating for the construction and provenance of wooden shipwreck remains from the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries found on the South Atlantic coast in the Buenos Aires, Chubut and Tierra del Fuego provinces.
As the holder of the JMA chair of the Cluster of Excellence ROOTS, Ignacio will offer classes on dendrochronology for PhD candidates and he will also collaborate in research activities within the Hazards subcluster during the next months.
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You can contact him at: iamundo@mendoza-conicet.gob.ar
Charlotte Brysting Damm, JMA Chairholder (Sept - Dec 2021)
Charlotte Brysting Damm is the holder of an JMA chair of the Cluster of Excellence ROOTS from September until Christmas, 2021. She is a professor of archaeology at the Department of Archaeology, History, Religious Studies and Theology at the Arctic University of Norway, located in Tromsø, north of the Arctic Circle.
Born in Denmark, Charlotte first studied archaeology at Aarhus University. She then completed a Master of Philosophy Degree (MPhil) in ethnoarchaeology and a PhD in archaeology at the University of Cambridge, UK. Since 1990, she has worked in northern Norway, apart from two years at the National University of Ireland, Galway.
While her PhD focused on the complex multicultural situation in Middle Neolithic Denmark, most of her later research has concentrated on northern hunter-gatherers. Although the majority of her published work concentrates on northern Fennoscandia, she has also done fieldwork in New Zealand, Botswana and Greenland and visited foraging groups in northern Thailand.
Charlotte’s main interests focus on the intersection between archaeology and anthropology, including past identities, multicultural and interregional interaction, rituals and cosmology as well issues relating to indigenous archaeology. She has led a multidisciplinary research group on early networking in northern Fennoscandia at the Centre for Advanced Study in Oslo and is currently a PI for a project on Stone Age Demographics.
While in Kiel, Charlotte will collaborate with colleagues in ROOTS and in particular with the subcluster Knowledge (link) in order to explore new avenues to address issues in hunter-gatherer archaeology.
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Charlotte Damm gave a talk on 15 November 2021 as part of the ROOTS lecture series. Find more information here:
ROOTS Public Lecture: Charlotte Damm
Public Lecture Series by the ROOTS/JMA-Chairholders: First-rate visiting professors from the USA and Norway at Kiel University
Find more about Charlotte Damm here (UiT – The Arctic University of Norway)
Tim Kohler, JMA Chairholder (September - December 2021)
Tim Kohler is a holder of the JMA chair of the Cluster of Excellence ROOTS for the beginning of September until Dec. 1, 2021. He comes from the USA, where he is a Regents Professor (emeritus) in Anthropology (archaeology) at Washington State University in Pullman. He is also an external faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute and a member of the ROOTS Scientific Advisory Board.
Tim while revisiting his University of Florida PhD alma mater on the occasion of an invited lecture (photo by: Tim Kohler, 2021).
Tim’s research has mostly centered on the US Southwest where he directed the Village Ecodynamics Project for almost two decades (link). This project has looked at many processes also central to various subclusters in ROOTS, including Inequalities, Conflict, Knowledge, and Socio-environmental Hazards. While in Kiel though he will be concentrating mainly on interacting with the ROOTS of Inequalities subcluster (link). One of his activities will be to set up a meeting for a project that has been recently funded by the US National Science Foundation, called ‘The creation and division of wealth and the long-term consequences of inequality: views from archaeology.” The first meeting for this project will be held at Oxford in November and Tim Kohler will be accompanied there by Tim Kerig, who will be representing the ROOTS subcluster on Inequalities. While in Kiel, Tim will also be working on ways to formalize approaches to causation in archaeology, using in particular the rich datasets generated by the Village Ecodynamics Project on the relationships through time among population size, climate, wealth inequality, and violence in northern Pueblo societies.
Another project in progress while he is here is editing a special issue of the Journal of Social Computing on a topic that overlaps with the ROOTS subcluster on Knowledge: “Evolution of Collective Computational Abilities of (Pre)Historic Societies.” Tim is lead author on the article introducing the issue, which will also include an article by ROOTS Speaker Johannes Müller on “Tripolye mega-sites: Collective Computational Abilities of prehistoric proto-urban societies.”
Finally, as time permits around these other activities, Tim is looking forward to getting to know as much as he can about the rich archaeology and history of the Schleswig-Holstein!
Tim Kohler (right) with some other members of the Village Project’s Community Center Survey, in Mesa Verde National Park (photo by: Tim Kohler, 2021)
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Tim Kohler gave a talk on 15 November 2021 as part of the ROOTS lecture series. Find more information here:
ROOTS Public Lecture: Tim Kohler
Public Lecture Series by the ROOTS/JMA-Chairholders: First-rate visiting professors from the USA and Norway at Kiel University
Find more about Tim Kohler here (Washington State University / USA)
