Dr Lorena Becerra-Valdivia

Research Profile

I am an archaeological scientist and radiocarbon dating specialist, with MSc (2015) and DPhil (2019) degrees from the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford. My research mainly involves the construction of reliable, high-resolution chronologies using radiocarbon dating and Bayesian modelling techniques, and focuses on the interface between past human occupations, ecology, and climate. Past projects include the establishment of timelines for hominin (modern humans and Neanderthals) dynamics during the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic Transition in the Zagros Mountains, the initial arrival of humans to North America around the Last Glacial Maximum, and human-environment-climate relationships in pre-Columbian Amazonia. I've previously worked at the W.M. Keck Carbon Cycle Accelerator Mass Spectrometer (University of California, Irvine) and Chronos 14Carbon Cycle (University of New South Wales, Sydney) radiocarbon dating facilities. I also have research & technical experience in stable isotope and organic residue analyses for archaeological applications. My current project is a three-year (2023-2026) Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship, titled ‘The role of abrupt climatic shifts in the initial settlement of South America’. The aim of the project is to test the role of millennial-scale climatic phases, the Antarctic Cold Reversal and Greenland Stadial 1, in the early settlement of South America by synchronising archaeological and paleoclimatic data using chronometric methods.

External websites:  

Google Scholar - https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=NlAKxXUAAAAJ

 

ORCID - https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5501-5347

 

Publications