Professor Christopher Bronk Ramsey

Research Profile

Radiocarbon dating in Archaeology

As the former-director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, he was been involved in many different archaeological projects.  These projects include those led from Oxford, and those that were collaborative with scholars elsewhere.  His primary focus in recent years was been in the archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean (Aegean, Egypt and the Levant), in the Palaeolithic period (with Tom Higham), Anglo-Saxon England (with Helena Hamerow and the FeedSax team) and Amazonia (with Frank Mayle and the HERC team).  His current focus in on the issues of chronology building for archaeological projects).


Quaternary chronology and Environmental Science

Radiocarbon dating  (0-50ka) provides one of the main ways for dating the later Quaternary (0-2.5Ma) and in particular the dating of modern human expansion into Europe, Neanderthal extinction and faunal/human responses to the climate variability during the last glacial cycle.  Much of his current research is directed to improving radiocarbon as a method for quaternary research.  He is the chair of the international INTCAL committee that oversees the calibration of radiocarbon. 


The use of numerical modeling methods in chronology

Over the last 20 years he has worked extensively on the application of Bayesian statistical methods to the study of chronology in both Archaeology and Quaternary environmental research.  He has formulated a systematic approach to approaching chronological research, which is embedded in the widely used software package OxCal.


Development of Nuclear Instruments and Methods

Trained as a physicist, much of his early-career research was in the development of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) techniques including the development of gas ion sources for AMS which allows the measurement of very small samples and a technique, GC-AMS  with applications in the environmental and biological sciences.  More recently he has been most concerned with the development of high-precision techniques  and their applications to archaeological and environmental problems.


Links

  • OxCal - radiocarbon calibration and statistical analysis software
  • IntCal - the international radiocarbon calibration group
  • IntChron - focussing on data integration
  • FeedSax - Feeding Anglo-Saxon England
  • HERCA - Human-Environment Interactions in pre-Columbian Amazonia
Publications
Teaching

Postgraduate teaching

Course lecturer in Chronology for the MSc in Archaeological Science.

Doctoral Supervision

I am happy to supervise on interdisciplinary topics (especially involving mathematical, physical or data sciences), applications of chronological modelling, and lessons from past climate change.

Current students

Archaeology in the Information Age: theoretical and practical aspects of archaeological outreach in the past and present.
Jakov Mlinarevic | DPhil Archaeology | Supervisors: David Griffiths and Christopher Bronk Ramsey
Understanding the Spatial-Temporal Trends of the Southern African Middle Stone Age
Ruby-Anne Birin | DPhil Archaeological Science | Supervisors: Peter Mitchell and Christopher Bronk Ramsey
Climate and Chronology: Environmental Variability and the Archaeology of Marine Isotope Stage 3
Monty Ochocki | Environmental Research (NERC DTP) - Archaeological Science | Supervisors: Thomas Higham and Christopher Bronk Ramsey
Applications of Computational and Spectral Imaging for Epigraphy
Taylor Bennett | DPhil Archaeological Science | Supervisors: Christopher Bronk Ramsey and Charles Crowther

Past students

Understanding past abrupt climatic change through the reduction of chronological uncertainty
Rebecca Kearney (2020) ORA | Environmental Research (NERC DTP) - Archaeological Science | Supervisors: Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Richard Staff and Paul Albert
Empirical and Theoretical Approaches to Assessing the Local Radiocarbon Marine Reservoir Effect
Eduardo Queiroz Alves (2019) ORA | DPhil Archaeological Science | Supervisors: Christopher Bronk Ramsey and Kita Macario
Identifying and comparing meteorological and geographical influences on high resolution climate signals in the oxygen isotope values of different environmental archives
Elisabeth Thompson (2018) ORA | DPhil Archaeological Science | Supervisor: Christopher Bronk Ramsey
Towards an Absolute Chronology of Early Mesopotamia: a Radiocarbon Perspective
Maciej Wencel (2017) ORA | DPhil Archaeology | Supervisors: Christopher Bronk Ramsey and Michael Dee
Rehydroxylation Dating
Vincent Hare (2016) ORA | DPhil Archaeological Science | Supervisor: Christopher Bronk Ramsey
New Insights into Old Problems: The Application of a Multidisciplinary Approach to the Study of Early Egyptian Ceramic Chronology, with a Focus on Luminescence Dating
Amber Hood (2016) ORA | DPhil Archaeological Science | Supervisors: Christopher Bronk Ramsey and Jean-Luc Schwenninger
Bayesian Methods for the Construction of Robust Chronologies
Sharen Lee (2012) ORA | DPhil Archaeological Science | Supervisor: Christopher Bronk Ramsey
Research on Radiocarbon Calibration Records, Focussing on New Measurements from Lake Suigetsu, Japan
Richard Staff (2011) ORA | DPhil Archaeological Science | Supervisor: Christopher Bronk Ramsey
A High-Precision Radiocarbon Chronology for Ancient Egypt using Bayesian Statistical Modelling
Michael Dee (2009) | DPhil Archaeological Science | Supervisor: Christopher Bronk Ramsey
New Developments in the Interpretation of Dendrochronology as Applied to Oak Building Timbers
Daniel Miles (2006) | DPhil Archaeological Science | Supervisor: Christopher Bronk Ramsey

Key words: chronology, digital archaeology, human evolution, resilience, policy, radiocarbon calibration, climate change, earlier prehistory, later prehistory, medieval, quaternary, Europe, Americas, E Asia, Egypt, Japan