Dr Pascal Flohr
I am an archaeologist specializing in the Middle East, where I mainly focus on the interaction between people and their environment.
After my PhD at the University of Reading on the use of crop stable isotopes for the reconstruction of past water availability, I have been a Postdoctoral researcher at the same university. I have studied the effects of climate change on past Middle Eastern societies by compiling information, especially radiocarbon dates, into a database – establishing synchronicity between climate and social change is the first step before even starting to think of causality between the two. I have also been generating new climate data and am in the process of publishing the results of a speleothem record from Iraq. I have participated in excavations and experimental archaeology projects in Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, the UK, and the Netherlands.
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Radiocarbon dating of Bestansur and Shimshara
Flohr, P, Matthews, R, Matthews, W, Richardson, A, Fleitmann, DEdited by:Matthews, R, Matthews, W, Richardson, A, Raheem, KRJuly 2020|Chapter|The Early Neolithic of the Eastern Fertile Crescent: Excavations at Bestansur and Shimshara, Iraqi KurdistanThe Eastern Fertile Crescent region of western Iran and eastern Iraq hosted major developments in the transition from hunter-forager to farmer-herder lifestyles through the Early Neolithic period, 10,000-7000 BC. Within the scope of the Central Zagros Archaeological Project, excavations have been conducted since 2012 at two Early Neolithic sites in the Kurdistan region of Iraq: Bestansur and Shimshara. Bestansur represents an early stage in the transition to sedentary, farming life, where the inhabitants pursued a mixed strategy of hunting, foraging, herding and cultivating, maximising the new opportunities afforded by the warmer, wetter climate of the Early Holocene. They also constructed substantial buildings of mudbrick, including a major building with a minimum of 65 human individuals, mainly infants, buried under its floor in association with hundreds of beads. These human remains provide new insights into mortuary practices, demography, diet and disease during the early stages of sedentarisation. The material culture of Bestansur and Shimshara is rich in imported items such as obsidian, carnelian and sea-shells, indicating the extent to which Early Neolithic communities were networked across the Eastern Fertile Crescent and beyond. This volume includes final reports by a large-scale interdisciplinary team on all aspects of the results from excavations at Bestansur and Shimshara, through application of state-of-the-art scientific techniques, methods and analyses. The net result is to re-emphasise the enormous significance of the Eastern Fertile Crescent in one of the most important episodes in human history: the Neolithic transition.FFR, Neolithic, radiocarbon dating, Near East, Archaeology, Middle East -
What can crop stable isotopes ever do for us? An experimental perspective on using cereal carbon stable isotope values for reconstructing water availability in semi-arid and arid environments
Flohr, P, Jenkins, E, Williams, HRS, Jamjoum, K, Nuimat, S, Müldner, GSeptember 2019|Journal article|Vegetation History and Archaeobotany© 2019, The Author(s). This study re-assesses and refines the use of crop carbon stable isotope values (Δ13C) to reconstruct past water availability. Triticum turgidum ssp. durum (durum wheat), Hordeum vulgare (six-row barley) and Sorghum bicolor (sorghum) were experimentally grown at three crop research stations in Jordan for up to three years under five different irrigation regimes: 0% (rainfall only), 40%, 80%, 100% and 120% of the crops’ optimum water requirements. The results show a large variation in carbon stable isotope values of crops that received similar amounts of water, either as absolute water input or as percentage of crop requirements. We conclude that C3 crop carbon stable isotope composition should be assessed using a climate zone specific framework. In addition, we argue that interpretation should be done in terms of extremely high values showing an abundance of water versus low values indicating water stress, with values in between these extremes best interpreted in conjunction with other proxy evidence. Carbon stable isotope values of the C4 crop Sorghum were not found to be useful for the reconstruction of water availability. -
Late Holocene droughts in the Fertile Crescent recorded in a speleothem from northern Iraq
Flohr, P, Fleitmann, D, Zorita, E, Sadekov, A, Cheng, H, Bosomworth, M, Edwards, L, Matthews, W, Matthews, RFebruary 2017|Journal article|Geophysical Research Letters -
Evidence of resilience to past climate change in Southwest Asia: Early farming communities and the 9.2 and 8.2 ka events
Flohr, P, Fleitmann, D, Matthews, R, Matthews, W, Black, SMarch 2016|Journal article|Quaternary Science Reviews