Ben Davies
Ben Davies is Tony Massini Postdoctoral Fellow in Data Science in the Yale Paleoarchaeology Lab. Ben received a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Auckland, and undertook postdoctoral study at the University of Utah. His research is focused on archaeological landscapes and coupled natural human systems in Oceania and Africa, making use of computational models to interrogate assumptions of how patterns form in archaeological and paleoecological records. His current role is focused on theoretical questions related to the regionalization of cultural and biological signals in Malawi from the Late Pleistocene onward, as well as methodological questions related to the formation of cultural deposits and optimizing field data collection and archiving. Ben also contributes to several interdisciplinary projects, including modeling the food-energy-water nexus among mobile pastoralists in Kenya; understanding the impacts of early hominin fire use on landscapes; and building serious games that help communities plan for climate change adaptation.
Selected Publications:
Davies, B., M. Power, M. Douglass, D. Braun, S. Mosher, L. Quick, I. Esteban, J. Sealy, J. Parkington, and J. T. Faith. 2022. Fire and the management of late Holocene landscapes in southern Africa. Quaternary Science Reviews289(107600):1-10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2022.107600
Davies, B., M. Douglass, P. Fanning, and S. Holdaway. 2021. Resilience and reversibility: engaging with archaeological record formation to inform on past resilience. Archaeological Review from Cambridge 36(1):51-74. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.79041
Faith, J.T., A. Du, A. K. Behrensmeyer, B. Davies, D. B. Patterson, J. Rowan, and B. Wood. 2021. Rethinking the ecological drivers of hominin evolution. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 36(9):797-807. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2021.04.011
Romanowska, I., S. Crabtree, K. Harris, and B. Davies, 2019. Agent-based modeling for archaeologists: Part 1 of 3.Advances in Archaeological Practice 7(2): 178-184. https://doi.org/10.1017/aap.2019.6
Davies, B., Holdaway, S. J., and P. C. Fanning, 2018. Exploring relationships between space, movement, and lithic geometric attributes in the formation of archaeological landscapes. American Antiquity 83(3): 444-461.https://doi.org/10.1017/aaq.2018.23