- Durham University
- People
- United Kingdom
About Joseph Patrick Meadows
My research explores and maps potential distributions of wild olive and wild grape across the Levant during the Holocene based on soil, slope, precipitation, and elevation data using GIS. Connected to the CLaSS project at Durham University, this research aims to show the prevalence of these ethnographically used plants and help reveal which sites likely or unlikely had access to them, which is vital to understanding and contextualizing the archaeological record within a dynamic landscape. Ultimately, differing and changing access to ethnographically used plants across different periods and sites played an important role in shaping the lives of peoples in not only this region, but across the world - demonstrating one of the many impacts of climate change, from our ancient past to today.
I also work with shepherds in Tunisia and record their intangible heritage and pastoral practices, aiming to both record previously undocumented information in danger from disapearing due to a changing climate, but also to provide a unique ethnographic perspective on archaeological reference material in zooarchaeological assemblages.