Anaïs is a prehistoric archaeologist interested in lithic technological evolution, the interaction between past material cultures and regional climates on evolutionary time scales, and the relationship between ecological and technological diversity. To approach related key questions, she seeks to integrate quantitative ecological and climate modeling with lithic technological analyses and has substantially contributed to the development of "eco-cultural niche modeling” approaches, which have garnered much attention in Palaeolithic research in recent years. Her previous research has mainly focused on the Gravettian of Western and Central Europe (ca. 34-24 ka cal BP) and attempted to steer necessary theoretical and methodological developments in order to improve the application of ecological niche modeling to past distributional data.

By joining the ECOLITHIC team, Anaïs intends to venture deeper into macroevolutionary archaeology, and to help develop novel approaches to better understanding the long-term dynamics of lithic technological evolution in south-western France, in particular the mechanisms and drivers of internal organization and intra-technological synergy, combining quantitative and qualitative perspectives.

Selected publications:

• Vignoles, Anaïs (2025) – « Reconciling traditional Prehistory and mathematical modelling to examine human–environment relations during the Upper Palaeolithic: concepts and methods for modelling eco-cultural niches ». Bulletin de la Société préhistorique française 122 (1): 61-93. hal-id: hal-05023274v1
• Vignoles, Anaïs, William E Banks, Laurent Klaric, Masa Kageyama, Marlon E Cobos, and Daniel Romero-Alvarez (2021). « Investigating Relationships between Technological Variability and Ecology in the Middle Gravettian (ca. 32-28 Ky Cal. BP) in France ». Quaternary Science Reviews 253: 106766. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106766
• Vignoles, Anaïs, Arnaud Caillo, William E. Banks, and Laurent Klaric (2024). « SIGMENT : une base de données bibliographique critique pour estimer la répartition géographique des unités archéologiques lithiques du Gravettien moyen et récent en France ». Bulletin de la Société préhistorique francaise 121 (2): 151‑86. hal-id: hal-04663152v1
• Gibert, Corentin, Anaïs Vignoles, Camille Contoux, et al. (2022). « Climate-Inferred Distribution Estimates of Mid-to-Late Pliocene Hominins ». Global and Planetary Change 210: 103756. doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2022.103756