Post-Doc, Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion
Research Fellow
About
Dr Chase received his D.Phil. in Geography from the University of Oxford. Prior to that he was awarded an MSc in Environmental Archaeology and Palaeoeconomy from the University of Sheffield, an MA in Geographic Education from Prescott College and a BA in Geography from Portland State University.
His research focuses on the development and evaluation of new palaeoenvironmental proxy data sources in the arid to sub-humid environments of southern Africa. While this region is highly sensitive to cycles of regional and global environmental change, and has the potential to be a valuable indicator of past climatic variability, only a very few palaeoenvironmental archives have been recovered from the area, and its environmental history remains poorly understood. As a result, models that have been developed to elucidate the dynamics of regional ecosystems, and the environmental context for human and cultural evolution are often contentious, lacking sufficient evidence to make robust interpretations.
This paucity of palaeoenvironmental information is largely a function of the region's climate that often precludes the preservation of organic proxy data sources. Dr. Chase's research concentrates on overcoming these obstacles by identifying and analyzing proxy archives that have either not experienced or are resistant to the effects of the region's pronounced seasonality.
He is presently exploring three primary research themes:
1.The identification of palaeoecological proxy archives along the west coast of southern Africa, particularly fossilized hyrax middens and pollen records from coastal wetlands in the Western Cape.
2.The analysis and evaluation of the aeolian deposits of southern Africa and their implications for the past dynamics of atmospheric and oceanic circulation systems in the African sector of the Southern Hemisphere.
3.The creation of a database of proxy information from the southern Africa that is allowing for:
the visualization and identification of the spatial and temporal patterning of palaeoenvironmental trends, the evaluation of hypotheses for the forcing mechanisms of environmental change, the development and evaluation of conceptual models that can be used to explore the dynamics and relative importance of different forcing mechanisms on southern African climates, and detailed data-model comparisons.
Contact Information
https://www.uib.no/persons/Brian.Chase