Institute for Prehistoric Archaeology & Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities (MESH),
University of Cologne
The position is to be filled initially for 2 years (100%, E13). The successful candidate will support the ECOLITHIC project (“A Radical Ecosystems View of Lithic Macro-Evolution”) which has recently received funding by the VolkswagenStiftung through its prestigious “Unknown Unknown” funding line. The candidate will work together with the PI to develop new conceptual, empirical and computational models on long-term evolutionary dynamics of integrated technological worlds of the Late Pleistocene (c. 120-15k BP) in Western and Central Europe. The position crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries, combing complexity science with archaeology, and will re-situate research on early stone artefact technologies within the emerging Anthropocene and Earth system sciences, notably assessing the transferability of the technosphere concept into deep-time contexts. The candidate will contribute to the academic life of the Institute for Prehistoric Archaeology and will be affiliated with the environmental humanities research hub MESH.
We are in looking in particular for a collaborative interdisciplinary researcher with interests in network science applications, as a primary objective of ECOLITHIC is develop new understandings of the co-occurrence patterns of deep-time stone artefact technologies and tool systems. The successful candidate will thereby benefit from collaboration with and co-supervision by senior researchers in Bonn (Wolfram Barfuss) and Barcelona (Sergi Valverde).
Your tasks:
- Conduct independent research and publish its results in high-tier international journals (including shared publications with the PI and project collaborators)
- Lead ECOLITHIC’s Work Package 3: “Theoretical simulations of lithic macro-evolution“ and work towards Objective 2 of the project: to explore and test ECOLITHIC’s ecosystem view of technological macro-evolution through modelling and/or simulation and to contrast it with competing perspectives on long-term technological change (e.g. phyletic, aggregational), and to develop new computational tools to trace and better understand distinct macro-evolutionary dynamics of Palaeolithic technological worlds
- Translate and operationalize ECOLITHIC’s theoretical core concepts, so that their bearing on the Late Pleistocene archaeological record can be explored in a data-driven fashion
- Support the PI in empirical data collection, curation and quantitative-statistical analysis as well as in the organization of scientific workshops and academic/public outreach
- Engage with literature and theoretical concepts from other disciplines, notably evolutionary biology, ecology, Earth system science, complexity and network science, archaeology, geoanthropology and nascent technosphere science
- Collaborate with external project collaborators and co-supervisors across archaeology, complexity sciences and Earth system/Anthropocene studies
Your profile:
- You have excellent English communication and writing skills
- You are interested in technological evolution and are strongly motivated by challenging interdisciplinary research, have some experience or yourself a background in crossing disciplinary boundaries, and seek to contribute to research “outside of the beaten tracks”, which includes high risks but promises to be transformational
- You hold a PhD and have a strong background in computational archaeology, data science, theoretical/computational biology, macroecology, physics, or complexity and/or network science (ideally with some knowledge about or previous contact with archaeology but this is not strictly required), OR you have a strong background in Palaeolithic archaeology, especially lithic technological analysis, complemented by some expertise in computational methods and/or modelling approaches (e.g. relational network analysis, agent-based modelling, ML, etc.)
- You are an autonomous thinker and creative problem-solver, and you understand that innovation in key arenas of knowledge production relies on constructive dialogue between sciences’ and humanities’ perspectives
- You have good coding skills (ideally in R) and the capacity to identify and work with relevant mathematical equations and simulation approaches and enjoy doing so in a transparent Open Science framework
- GIS (Geographical Information Systems) and network software skills (NetworkX, Gephi, etc.) are advantageous
- Knowledge/experience or previous contact with (lithic) technology and its archaeological analysis are advantageous
- You are used to bring in and develop your own ideas but understand that learning is an open-ended process and calls for ongoing self-reflection
What we offer:
- A highly inspiring, cutting-edge interdisciplinary and international research environment at the intersection of deep-time archaeology, the environmental humanities (MESH) and coupled human-Earth system science (HESCOR)
- Room for the development of an individual, competitive research profile and the possibility to contribute to a novel field of interdisciplinary research in-the-making
Deadline: tdb
Please apply through the job portal of the University of Cologne following this link: tba
Contact: ✉ Dr. Shumon T. Hussain