Candidates are invited to apply for a PhD fellowship focused on geochronology and reconstruction of environmental change in the southern Caucasus during key periods of early human evolution and dispersal. The southern Caucasus, located north of the Levantine corridor, hosts a suite of extraordinary Paleolithic sites with numerous stone tools and skeletal remains. This has fueled the hypothesis that early humans used the southern Caucasus as a refuge and launching pad for expansions into Europe and Asia over the last two million years. However, this hypothesis remains untested due to lack of data, and it is therefore unknown i) who occupied the southern Caucasus (which species), ii) when the area was occupied, and iii) if/how dispersals were driven by environmental change. This PhD project will use the latest developments in Quaternary geochronometry and biomarker paleoclimatology to address some of these questions, and hereby help constrain the history of human occupation and environmental change in the southern Caucasus.
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[Website Aarhus University]