Projects
GEOPAL
project name: Geoarchaeology, paleoenvironments and luminescence geochronology in the eastern alpine realm and South Africa during the last glacial cycle (115-11 ka)
initiating country: The European Union
Framework Programme: FP7 programme area: MC – People contract type: MCOIF – Marie Curie Outgoing International Fellowship
contract/proposal/call number: 219944
status: active
start date: September 2008 duration: 36 months projected finish date: September 2011
Keywords
keywords: Neanderthals; geoarcheology
Project Budget
total budget: € 237,050
Participants
Note that the follow people may not represent the full extent of the consortium. FEAST has tried to identify the Australian participants, and their collaborators (or coordinator), within the project. Also note that Australian participation may not necessarily be on a formal level.
| name | organisation | state or country |
|---|---|---|
| Richard Roberts | UOW | NSW, Australia |
| Prof Christoph Spoetl | UIBK | Austria |
Further information
summary:
The last glacial cycle included some of the coldest and most unstable moments of the last 2 million years of Earth history. Climate-driven environmental changes impacted on the landscape and also influenced human evolution, dispersal and culture; they may also have played a role in the extinction of the Neanderthals. Human/environment relations thus merit detailed research. Accurate chronologies for human activities and contemporaneous paleoenvironmental records are key requirements to sustain further progress in geoarchaeology and to improve our knowledge of the history of humankind.
Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating is currently one of the most dynamic fields in geochronology. The single-grain approach, in particular, opens up new opportunities for dating materials that have hitherto been ignored. Pioneering work has shown that archaeological sequences in cave-mouth deposits can be reliably dated using single sand-sized grains of quartz. The overseas host institution (U. Wollongong, Australia) is a world-renowned geochronology laboratory with recognized expertise in single-grain OSL dating.
Source: Cordis
