HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research

Different measurements from Lake Nakuru through time. This includes diatoms that represent at least 10% in one sample ; T. Index which shows potential depth; conductivity (amount of salts in the lake); aridity (Dim1 and K/Ti); biological productivity (Dim2, Ca/Mg, Si/Zr, Sr/Ti, and inc/coh); and anoxia (Dim3, Mo, and Fe/Mn). Global climate phases are highlighted with the anticipated dry phase (Last Glacial Maximum, LGM) in brown and the anticipated wet phase in blue (Bølling–Allerød interstadial, B-A).

📢 New Blog Post
Lakes may seem stable in our everyday experience, but over hundreds to thousands of years they can change a lot! Dr. Elena Robakiewicz explains lake #coring and what Lake Nakuru (Kenya) reveals about the past 35,000 years!🔬

🔗 read on here:
shorturl.at/FRHLi

📢 New Blog Post
How can a rock from hundreds of kilometers away become a stone tool? Dr. Johanna Hilpert explains how HESCOR researchers study prehistoric #networks of interaction and #exchange 🌐🤝

🔗 read on here:
shorturl.at/f0t5G

#Magdalenian #LBK #Modelling

User interface of the PALVEG app. In the panel on the left hand side, various options such as the desired time interval, specific (groups of) taxa, and different display options can be selected. On the right hand side, maps are dynamically generated based on the user input.

📢 New Blog Post
Understanding #reconstructions of past vegetation can be difficult….
@oliverkern.bsky.social introduces his PALVEG app to make the maps from #paleovegetation reconstructions more accessible to researchers across all disciplines! 💻🌳

🔗 read on here:
shorturl.at/dNas6

Moisture availability and productivity at Lake Nakuru, Kenya leading into the African Humid Period Lake Nakuru, a lake with the one of the highest primary production rates in the world, is an eastern African soda lake that contains important records…

📢 New Publication
Dr. Elena Robakiewicz’s team used #multi-proxy data to trace 40,000 years of change at Kenya’s Lake Nakuru, showing why such records matter in alkaline lakes and hinting that Nakuru’s chemistry responded to short-term Northern Hemisphere #climate shifts.

shorturl.at/ArQbd

Graphical summary of differences between disciplinarity, multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity and some key conditions to achieve the latter.

📢 New Blog Post
Achieving true interdisciplinarity is hard! @shumon.bsky.social makes an argument for accepting the transformative nature of #interdisciplinary research - even if that means researchers must revisit their standard methods and assumptions!

🔗 read on here:
shorturl.at/YE4gx

My grapple with the "ontological turn" and its implications for human-animal archaeologies; many points are not new but I contend that "ontological" cannnot be a mere replacement for "culture" and that the critique is radically empirical (not "metaphysical"): www.eaz-journal.org/index.php/ea... 🏺

Slide showing name and date of the workshop and logos of the projects as well as of the University of Cologne and RWTH Aachen University.

📢 Upcoming Event
BLE & HESCOR Workshop: Interdisciplinary Cooperation and Profile Building 🌐🤝

When: November 28th, 10:00-14:00
Where: Stadtpalais in Aachen

🔗 detailed program & information on how to register:
shorturl.at/PRotW

#interdisciplinary #research #collaboration

Landscape reconstructions for Europe during the late Last Glacial (60–20 ka BP): a pollen-based REVEALS approach Abstract. Vegetation change during the Last Glacial period in Europe plays a crucial role in better understanding the ecosystem dynamics response to abrupt climate change. Yet, most quantitative recon...

🔔🔔New Paper 🔔🔔
Pollen-based REVEALS land-cover reconstructions for Europe during the latter half of the Last Glacial Period

essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/...

We show that glacial refugia and frequent openings of migration corridors may have played a substantial role human dispersal

What is a good model? - Hescor What's a (good) model? Dr. Annika Vogel highlights the questions that need to be answered and decisions that need to be made to appropriately model interdisciplinary phenomena - there are always trade...

📢 New Blog Post
What's a (good) model? Dr. Annika Vogel highlights the questions that need to be answered and decisions that need to be made to appropriately #model interdisciplinary phenomena - there are always tradeoffs!

🔗 read on here:
shorturl.at/JklT1

The figure depicts the four ways that Machine Learning can benefit archaeology: feature detection, site identification, chronological modelling, and artifact classification.

📢 New Blog Post
How can machine learning be used in archaeology? 💻
Dr. Boqiang Huang lists the ways that archaeologists could use machine learning to revolutionize standard archaeological methods.

🔗 read on here:
shorturl.at/PRwTl

Visualization of the least-cost path between three points, calculated using Dijkstra's algorithm. The route successfully circumvents major topographical obstacles like the Alps and the Pyrenees, while also finding optimal passages through the mountains where necessary. (copyright: Lena Perlberg).

📢 New Blog Post
How can we actually map out potential patterns of human #migration? Max Brockmann discusses how he and Lena Perlberg use methods of #probability to estimate how earlier humans may have moved throughout Europe! 🌍

#modelling #leastcostpath #costmap

🔗 read on here:
shorturl.at/lIKIB

The map shows population shifts from south-western to north-eastern Europe during the last cold phase of the Ice Age. Photo: Isabell Schmidt, University of Cologne.

📢 New Blog Post
How did #Palaeolithic humans cope with the sudden cold of the Younger Dryas (~12,000 years ago) in Europe? ❄️
A team led by HESCOR’s @isabell-schmidt.bsky.social and Andreas Maier has answers!

🔗 read on here:
shorturl.at/n2tND

📢 Upcoming Event
HESCOR Vision Forum Session on European Neolithic Transitions, Networks, and Beyond! 🔍

When ⏰: Monday, September 22nd, 2025, from 09:00-12:00
Where📍: @unicologne.bsky.social

🔗 detailed program & information on how to register:
shorturl.at/YO1Qk

#Neolithic #Networks #Archaeology

Diagram showing a virtual machine running a Docker environment. Inside Docker are four isolated containers: NGINX proxy, CKAN application, PostgreSQL (metadata), and SOLR search—representing the HESCOR database components running separately.

📢 New Blog Post
How might an #interdisciplinary database work? HESCOR Project Database Manager, Philipp Schlüter, lays out the technical problems and potential solutions for creating HESCOR's #database.

🔗 read on here:
shorturl.at/g3P7l

New paper with Monika Stobiecka on the role of #conviviality thinking in deep-time #archaeology and #museum spaces and the need to speak to a critical #planetary moment 🏺: doi.org/10.1017/S138...

#multispecies #coexistence #heritage @mesh-research-hub.bsky.social @hescor.bsky.social

Politics of more-than-human life and Earth System Science - Hescor

Upcoming @hescor.bsky.social and @mesh-research-hub.bsky.social event at the University of Cologne on the "Politics of More-Than-Human Life and Earth System Science" with an exciting programme: www.hescor-project.com/news/politic...

View from the Afroalpine Plateau into the lowlands (Bale Mountains, SE Ethiopia).

📢 New Blog Post
Living in high-altitudes is challenging - but humans in the #Ethiopian highlands have done it for tens of thousands of years! Dr. Götz Ossendorf introduces his hypothesis that social connectedness allowed past humans to endure such harsh conditions!

🔗 read on here:
shorturl.at/vH1en

The figure contains graphical, iconic (human and animal icons) and textual elements. They are horizontally arranged to form three separate compartments, each of which is populated by a different configuration of humans and animals, accompanied by a symbolic and descriptive qualification of the associated learning mode. On the left, humans learn to think about themselves and their worlds through other animals (for example a raven), exemplified by the question “Who am I in this world?” (learning through). In the middle, humans take inspiration from other animals (for example beavers) in how to manipulate their environments, exemplified by the realization “Ah, this is how it works!” (learning from). On the right, humans make themselves at home in the world in such a way that they can coinhabit their environments with other animals (for example wolves), thereby co-learning how to live effectively in these environments with the respective animals (learning with). The framing arrows on the top and bottom indicate that human cultural frameworks can be expected to shape these modes of learning to various degrees and that their behavioural integration can be expected to differ across spatiotemporal scales.

📢 New Blog Post
What have we learned from animals and they from us? @shumon.bsky.social & Dr. Dominik Ohrem highlight their research to better integrate the ways that humans and animals learn from each other and how that knowledge-sharing impacts the Earth System!

🔗 read on here:
shorturl.at/6zdAa

Bridging the Gap: Challenges of Interdisciplinary Science in Human Origins Research - Hescor Interdisciplinary research demands extra effort, time, and communication—but it’s worth it! Dr. Isabell Schmidt outlines the challenges involved and explains why such collaboration is essential for an...

📢 New Blog Post
#Interdisciplinary research demands extra effort, time, and communication—but it’s worth it! @isabell-schmidt.bsky.social outlines the challenges involved and explains why such collaboration is essential for answering questions about our deep #past.

🔗 read on here:
shorturl.at/VSa6s

Drilling into Deep Time - Hescor HESCOR Researcher, Dr. Elena Robakiewicz, was one of 65 scientists from all over the world who gathered in Potsdam from July 12-15 to discuss ideas for scientific drilling of Lake Kinneret in Israel.

Our Dr. Elena Robakiewicz joined the KIND workshop by @icdpdrilling.bsky.social to discuss scientific #drilling ideas for Israel's Lake Kinneret. The team aims to address research questions relevant to HESCOR, including #paleoclimate variability and its link to human #evolution.

🔗 shorturl.at/5JqZS

Modelling human migration on networks using partial differential equations - Hescor

📢 New Blog Post
How can we actually model human migration? Max Brockmann breaks down how mathematicians can use Partial Differential Equations to #model continental-scale human #migrations in prehistory!

🔗 read on here:
shorturl.at/vROZj

#PDE #data #mathematics #interdisciplinary #prehistory

Congrats from us downstream! 🎉

How do population size and connectedness, and resource scarcity and sufficiency, influence technological innovation? - Hescor

📢 New Blog Post
What does innovation have to do with #population? And what drives #innovation - hardship or abundance? @tilmanhartley.bsky.social explores some of the theoretical questions about how different aspects of #human #societies might impact innovation!

🔗 read on here:
shorturl.at/KSiJK

📢 New Publication
@shumon.bsky.social was invited to write an authoritative overview of core themes, findings and research frontiers in the emerging field of #Palaeolithic #human-animal studies.

#multispecies #humananimalrelations

read on here:
tinyurl.com/bdcvpwwn

🚀 New Project!
@shumon.bsky.social and his colleagues Johannes Schick & @nakedprimate.bsky.social just received funding from @volkswagenstiftung.de for their new research project „ZOOGESTURES“! #multispecies
Congrats!

@mesh-research-hub.bsky.social
@unicologne.bsky.social

tinyurl.com/kswsda4k

www.uni-bonn.de/de/neues/118...

📢 Join #HESCOR at the #VarI #Tag-der-Archäologie this Saturday (July 5, 11–17 h) in Bonn! Tilman and Johanna will present our research on long-term #human–environment interactions. Discover #archaeological institutions and projects in #Cologne & #Bonn. More info here:

Communicating Interdisciplinary Data - Hescor

Researchers at universities rarely work with researchers in other departments - why? Dr. Elena Robakiewicz highlights the difficulties of understanding #research and #data in other fields and what HESCOR is doing to address data #communication issues!

🔗 read on here:
tinyurl.com/bdffven4

✍️ HESCOR Comics
We are collaborating with Dr Frederik von Reumont (Institute of Geography Education) to create easily digestible #educational #comics about the #interdisciplinary scientific process for the public, ranging in age from school children to the young at heart!

🔗 tinyurl.com/ed825wmf

The archaeology of climate change: a blueprint for integrating environmental and cultural systems - Nature Communications Here, the authors propose how climate change archaeology can explain how cultural systems impact interactions between humans and the environment, and vice versa, presenting a framework based in c...

📢 New Publication
This #interdisciplinary study with Co-Author Andreas Maier (HESCOR) outlines how an #archaeology of #climate change can bridge gaps between cultural and Earth system models - offering a framework for developing integrative models for future research.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...