Ash started following the work of 17 people.
Ash added a paper
Ash started following the work of Nick Brooks.
Faculty Member, Anthropology and Geography
About
My current research involves developing a framework of landscape and environmental change within south-east Arabia over the past 200,000 years, against which the archaeology of the region can be set. The Arabian Peninsula has played a critical role in the migration and dispersal of early human communities and is located at the interface between two of the worlds most dynamic climate systems; the Indian Ocean Monsoon (IOM) and the Mid-Latitude Westerlies (MLW). The periodic northward migration of the IOM, driven by changes in glacial boundary conditions and insolation, has transformed the landscape of Arabia from hyper-arid to one littered with lakes, streams and active alluvial fan systems.
The development of a high-resolution record of environmental change is therefore essential in assessing the ability of the region to support human occupation and autochthonous development during pluvial phases, whilst also providing insight into the nature of Late Quaternary climate change. Special attention is paid to climatic and landscape variability during MIS6 (~180-130 kyr BP), MIS5 (~130-74 kyr BP) and MIS3 (~60-20 kyr BP), whilst the correlation of pluvial phases with global climatic events will also help to shed light on the driving forces behind IOM variability.
Utilising a number of inter-stratified lacustrine/fluvial-aeolian sequences from the UAE and Oman, the research employs geochemical, isotope, sedimentological (bulk physical) and palaeobotanical analyses as part of a multi-proxy approach, whilst a robust chronology is developed using AMS radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating methods.
