Dear archaeobotanists,

I am pleased to announce the date and place of my public PhD defense for my thesis entitled: "Of trees and men: new insights into man-environment relationships in the moist forest of central Africa during the late Holocene."

The presentation (in French) will be held at Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, 2 Passage des Déportés, 5030 Gembloux (Belgium), September 15, 2 PM, in the auditoire de Biologie Végétale (BV, building 48 of the map, in attachment).

Summary: In central Africa, vegetation history has been documented by paleoenvironmental studies (especially palynology), which mainly concerned the way climate has shaped the forest landscapes. Human impacts in this region have hardly been studied so far, especially at local scale. The main objective of this PhD is to propose an approach based on archaeology and the use of charred botanical remains found in soils, either wood charcoal and seeds, in order to document the Holocene anthropogenic impacts on the forest structure and composition. When coupled with the diachronic analysis of human activities, these land-use biomarkers can allow a better understanding of the relationship between man and his environment in central Africa during this period. Thereby, the first part of this PhD introduces the conceptual framework and the materials and methods used during the research. Then, the second part constitutes the core of the work, and presents the chronology of human activities in the northern Congo Basin, the use of biomarkers to discriminate between these activities, either domestic of agricultural, and the effect of the recent anthropogenic activities in the dynamics of several light-demanding tree populations. Finally, the third part draws the main recommendations of the work, and formulates potential for additional research.

The final manuscript will be available online (ResearchGate) soon after this date.

Feel free to contact me for more details.

Best regards,