Christian Sommer
@sommergeo.bsky.social
300 followers 1.7K following 10 posts
Geographer at http://roceeh.net
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sommergeo.bsky.social
CFP for CAA 2026 Vienna is open (deadline Oct 26)! We're back with Session 39: Palaeo-GIS — for GIS in Palaeolithic & prehistoric contexts. Reflective, context-aware papers especially welcome.
🔗 Session info: 2026.caaconference.org/conference-s...
Conference Sessions – CAA 2026
2026.caaconference.org
sommergeo.bsky.social
Annoucning two sessions at CAA 2026, Vienna 🎉
📢 Call for papers is open — abstracts due Oct 26, 2025

🧩 S25: How to do ROAD – A Tool for Multidisciplinary Studies in Human Evolution
🗺️ S39: Palaeo-GIS

👉 Details & submission: 2026.caaconference.org/conference-s...
Reposted by Christian Sommer
roceeh.bsky.social
We congratulate the Faya Paleolandscape on its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List! (whc.unesco.org/en/list/1735/). Since its early years, ROCEEH has supported research in Jebel Faya and neighboring sites financially and with personnel.
📷Sharjah Archaeology Authority
Overview of the 10 km long Jebel Faya mountain and the plain with the archaeological sites in front. The ridge forms a barrier to the Rub’ al Khali desert. (photo: Sharjah Archaeology Authority)
sommergeo.bsky.social
📄📢New article: Bader, Sommer, Linstädter, Masia, Blessing, Forrester, & MacDonald (2025). Decoding hunter-gatherer-knowledge and selective choice of lithic raw materials during the Middle and Later Stone Age in Eswatini. Journal of Archaeological Science, 180, 106302. doi.org/10.1016/j.ja...
Fig. 3. (a) View of the Mgwayiza valley; (b) detail of red jasper outcrop with white quartz veins; (c) knapped materials. Stream power analysis in relation to chert bearing lithologies in the study area. Least cost path analysis indicating the optimal transport routes between raw material outcrops and archaeological sites. A scatterplot of NAA data representing PC1 (40 % var.) and PC2 (21.5 % var.) for all source and artifact samples. Element vectors are shown, representing elements that drive variation between compositional groups.
sommergeo.bsky.social
New @roceeh.bsky.social Newsletter #25 with an article on our archaeoligcal + geoscientific work in the Jojosi Dongas!
roceeh.bsky.social
ROCEEH Newsletter #25 is out! tinyurl.com/298mya2t

🪨 The Jojosi Dongas’ hidden history of early
humans and landscapes
👣 Lateurope: Why Western Europe was settled by
hominins later than other regions of Eurasia
🏛️ South-Africa‘s Sibhudu Cave named a UNESCO
World Heritage Site
🏹 Becoming a bow hunter
Cover of ROCEEH Newsletter #25
Reposted by Christian Sommer
subfossilguy.bsky.social
Seeing Blatten buried again and again, from every angle...

Properly staggering! 😮😱
sommergeo.bsky.social
I strongly recommend visiting @gideys.bsky.social 's talk on the Mai Adrasha archaeological site in Tigrai, to be held in Session S29: "Heritage under bombs - digital methods in the studies of endangered heritage in conflict zones"!
Reposted by Christian Sommer
roceeh.bsky.social
ROCEEH's Jan-Olaf Reschke, Christine Hertler and Christian Sommer @sommergeo.bsky.social spotted at #CAA2025 in Athens!
Hear our talks in Session 14: "Advances in modelling past human ecosystems", held in Room A5 on Thursday, May 8th, 13:45–16:05.
sommergeo.bsky.social
Become my colleague and work with ROCEEH on the ROAD database!
roceeh.bsky.social
💼Open position in the ROCEEH Project!
Join the team as Data Curator for Paleolithic Archaeology and help expand the ROAD database!
🔍Details: www.hadw-bw.de/aktuelles/au...
📅Deadline: 28.02.2025
The project "The Role of Culture in Early Expansions of Humans (interner Link)" (ROCEEH) is a research project of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences within the framework of the Academy Program of the German Federal and State Governments. It explores the changing interactions of cultural and ecological developments as well as spatiotemporal expansions in the course of human evolution between 3 million and 20,000 years ago in Africa and Eurasia. ROCEEH is projected to run until 2027.

The Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities is seeking for the project ROCEEH at the work place of the University of Tübingen starting on 01.05.2025 a
Data Curator (m/f/d) with a background in Palaeolithic Archaeology

(TV-L E13, 100% for two years)

Your tasks: 

    Data maintenance and quality control of the project's database ROAD
    Support of archaeological areas of the ROAD database, incl. compilation of relevant data on material culture (e.g. stone tools, organic artefacts etc.)
    Conceptual development of the database applications
    Input of literature and maintenance of literature data in ROAD
    Coordination of work on ROAD between the research centres in Tübingen and Frankfurt
    Technical supervision of students working on the ROCEEH project
    Participation in the preparation of specialist publications
    Presentation of the database at conferences, as part of training courses and in public relations work
    Involvement in university teaching is possible.

Your profile:

    A university degree with a doctorate in the field of material culture in Palaeolithic archaeology
    Experience in working with relational databases
    Experience with SQL and R programming is an advantage
    Experience in the completion of specialist publications
    Very good knowledge of written and spoken English, other language skills are an advantage
    Very good communication and teamwork skills

The position is limited to two years. Severely disabled applicants will be given …
sommergeo.bsky.social
Thank you! Assemblages appear red during the time period associated with their age range, derived from absolute and cultural dating. As time progresses, assemblages change from red to grey, indicating that assemblages were deposited, buried, etc. during that time period.
sommergeo.bsky.social
⏩Fast forward: You can easily create animated maps in R using data from the ROAD database @roceeh.bsky.social. This example shows the appearance (🔴) and deposition (⚫) of ~6000 dated assemblages with stone artifacts between 2,780,000 and 10,000 years BP.
💻 github.com/sommergeo/ro...
sommergeo.bsky.social
I'm very proud that Marie Luise Geisbusch, whose B.Sc. thesis I supervised, has been awarded the Sustainability Prize of the University of Tübingen for her thesis "Restoration Effects on Peatland Vegetation – Integrating Field and Landsat Data" 🌱🛰️
Presentation of the sustainability prize for final theses at the university of tübingen 2024. Prof. Potthast announces the winners with images of Marie Geisbusch's work in the background on a screen.
sommergeo.bsky.social
Ok, first bluesky post here: I'm excited to share our introductory paper on joint archaeology + geomorphology work in the Dongas of Jojosi, KwaZulu-Natal 🇿🇦. doi.org/10.36615/saf...
Figure 3 from the paper showing the Donga landscape, a detail view of a donga cut-and-fill profile, two paleosols, calcrete and a hornfels outcrop.