HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research

📢 Call for Papers HESCOR project leads are guest editing a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Quaternary Science on Human-Earth system interactions, population dynamics, and cultural #evolution during the #Pleistocene and #Holocene! Open to external submissions! 📬 🔗 shorturl.at/9n3Ri

📢 New Blog Post As the #HESCOR Project concludes, the research team, led by editors Dr. Andreas Maier and Dr. Nikki Vercauteren, will summarize their work in an upcoming Special Issue! 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/FO9l0

Have you seen our new Interactive Comics? 📢 Our HESCOR Comics created by Dr. Frederik von Reumont were made interactive by Vittorio Iannuzzi and Dr. Elena Robakiewicz to highlight the research at HESCOR! 🔗You can find all our interactive Comics here shorturl.at/l0W9S shorturl.at/bt1It

📢 New Blog Post How do humans act in the #Earth System? Dr. Dominik Ohrem and Dr. Shumon Hussain argue for a multi-dimensional account of "human agency." 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/KldFY

📢 New Blog Post To understand the #Earth and Human Systems, we break them down into spheres. Dr. Dominik Ohrem and Dr. Shumon Hussain describe the critical elements of the human sphere to create more accurate Earth System Models! 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/UX0Bs

📢 New Blog Post How closely can #climate models reproduce Earth’s changing #vegetation over the past 20,000 years?🌳 Dr. Anne Dallmeyer explains how she and her colleagues explore where models succeed - and why they still miss important regional detail 🔎 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/PmTyi

📢 New Student Blog How to integrate uncertainty and biases in the #HEPModel? Anna shares experiences from her Master's thesis at #UoC, where #ClimateScience & #Archaeology come together. 🔗 Read her story here: www.hescor-project.com/student-pers... and learn more about #HESCOR #OpenScience

📢 New Blog Post How did Europe's first #farmers 10,000 years ago interact with their environment? 🌾 Dr. Johanna Hilpert shares how HESCOR researchers are studying the #Linearbandkeramik culture and their relationship with the environment! 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/E6alg #Neolithic #LBK

📢 New Blog Post How did past humans utilize some of Africa’s highest landscapes? ⛰️ In his new publication, Dr. Götz Ossendorf explores evidence that reveals how humans 15,000 years ago took advantage of newly ice-free landscapes in #Ethiopia. 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/9VPId

📢 New Publication Why did humans intermittently use harsh Afroalpine environments in prehistory?⛰️ Dr Götz Ossendorf et al. present new data from Ethiopia's Bale Mountains offering insights into past landscape change & high-altitude human adaptation! 🔗 shorturl.at/S5dbm #Ethiopia #Alpinearchaeology

📢 New Blog Post Can artificial intelligence transform how we classify artefacts? 🏺 Discover how Dr. Boqiang Huang is using transfer learning to overcome limited data and subjectivity, unlocking new insights into the past! 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/guxgUDiagram

📢 New Publication How can environmental records be recovered from the Ethiopian Rift? Dr Verena Foerster-Indenhuck and colleagues show how overlapping sediment cores from the Chew Bahir drilling campaign enable reconstructions of past climate and human evolution!🔬 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/BzEDT

📢 New Publication Dr Yaping Shao and colleagues present a new open-access PLOS ONE study simulating population dynamics during the Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic Transition (ca. 50–38 ka) on the Iberian Peninsula. #MiddlePalaeolithic #Neanderthals #Aurignacien #AMH 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/YU0Da

📢 HESCOR Seminar #UoC Master's students! 👋 Curious about how humans and the Earth interact in complex, dynamic systems? 🌐🤝 Explore cutting-edge research and modelling approaches from climate science, archaeology, mathematics, and the humanities – all in one seminar! 🔗 read more: shorturl.at/OxQzZ

📢 New Blog Post How might the first anatomically modern humans have migrated across Europe? 🌍👣 @isabell-schmidt.bsky.social explores this question using the “Our Way Model” and results from our recent Nature Communications paper! 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/5WsC6

📢 Studierendenperspektive Von Großwildjagd zur Polykrise: Student der HESCOR Ringvorlesung Tristan Boente erklärt, warum wir für die komplexen Herausforderungen unserer Zeit neue wissenschaftliche Denkansätze brauchen! 🌍💡 🔗 Hier weiterlesen: shorturl.at/auQIK

📢 Student Perspective What makes Earth Scientists so sure that the current #climate crisis is man-made? HESCOR Ringvorlesung student Bethan Callow explains why scientists have a lot of certainty about our role in current global climate changes!🌦️ 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/1K1ez

📢 New Publication We often think of clothing in early human evolution as „dress“, „haute couture“ or simply as functional. @shumon.bsky.social argues that this has fundamentally clouded our view for the role of clothing in negotiating past human-animal relationships!🔎 🔗 read more: shorturl.at/JyXsk

Together with Krist Vaesen, I have written some words of caution about #replication in lithic analysis. We fear that the way the issue has been taken up in #Palaeolithic #archaeology can narrow the scope of disciplinary inquiry 🏺🧪🦣 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

📢 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

📢 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

📢 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

📢 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... 🏺

📢 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

🔔🔔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

📢 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

📢 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

📢 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

📢 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

📢 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

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...

📢 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

📢 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

📢 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

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

📢 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

📢 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

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

📢 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...

What is HESCOR? 🤔 Join Andreas Maier and Nikki Vercauteren for insights into HESCOR‘s vision and research goals! want to learn more? hescor-project.com #HESCOR #Interdisciplinary #UniCologne #EarthSystem #HumanSystem #ResearchProject #Culture #Nature

Hello Bluesky! 👋 Welcome to the official Bluesky account of #HESCOR - an interdisciplinary research project based at the #UniCologne! We explore how the human and earth system co-evolve, bridging natural sciences, system modelling, and the humanities. 🔗 Learn more: www.hescor-project.com