From the Quaternary Dating Laboratory, Roskilde University, Denmark. The deadine is in two weeks!
Applications are invited for the above Ph.D scholarship, which will be based at the Quaternary Dating Laboratory, Roskilde University, Denmark and affiliated to GESS (the Graduate Programme in Environmental Stress Studies). The scholarship is for a period of 3 years and must be filled as soon as possible (applications required by 15 February 2008). Salary will be around 268,000 Danish kroner per year, before tax and deductions.
This project will contribute to understanding the timing and forcing mechanisms of the migration of modern humans (Homo sapiens) and earlier hominins from Africa across southern Asia and into Australasia. The Ph.D student will be part of an international team of geochronologists, archaeologists and palaeoecologists that is currently investigating key archaeological and palaeofaunal sites in continental southern Asia (India and peninsula Malaysia) and island Southeast Asia (the Philippines and Indonesia). The student will be primarily responsible for providing a robust chronological framework for the most critical archaeological and palaeontological sites, to enable the turning points in faunal evolution and hominin dispersal to be placed in their correct temporal sequence. The overall aim is to combine results from two complementary numerical-age dating methods (40Ar/39Ar and optically stimulated luminescence, OSL) with archaeological and faunal data to reconstruct the timing and routes of dispersal of hominins around the rim of the Indian Ocean, and to document the contemporaneous ecological changes in these regions and the nature of human–environment interactions. The temporal focus will be the Middle and Late Pleistocene stages (~800 to 10 ka ago), which are accessible to both Ar/Ar and OSL dating.
The Ar/Ar work will be carried out under the supervision of Dr Michael Storey in the Quaternary Dating Laboratory (www.QuadLab.dk) at Roskilde University (Denmark), which is equipped with a state-of-the-art multi-collector noble gas mass-spectrometer. OSL dating will be carried out in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Wollongong (Australia), in collaboration with Prof. Richard ‘Bert’ Roberts. Full training will be given in field and geochronological methods.
The application should include a vision statement of 4–6 pages, a time plan, copies of educational certificates, and curriculum vitae. Letters of recommendation may also be submitted. Further information can be obtained by contacting Michael Storey by phone at +45 4674 2308 or by email at storey@ruc.dk
Applications should be submitted as 5 printed copies (electronic copies are not acceptable) to:
Ph.D. Secretary, Hanna Pihl
GESS
Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change
Roskilde University
Universitetsvej 1, PO Box 260
DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark
The deadline for receipt of applications is 12:00, Friday 15 February, 2008. Material received after this time will not be taken into account. Applications sent by e-mail will not be considered.