Episode 1: Dr. Chris Kiahtipes

For our very first episode of Talkin’ Tropics, Dr. Chris Kiahtipes, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology with the Institute for the Advanced Study of Culture and Environment, University of South Florida joins Dr. Yoshi Maezumi and Dr. Robert Patalano to discuss his research in Africa’s Congo Basin and the Great Basin region of North America. 

Chris is an environmental archaeologist who specializes in the recovery and analysis of plant microfossils, mainly pollen. His research combines archaeological and palaeoecological methods to document the long-term influence of human societies on global ecosystems, and often includes a multi-proxy toolkit focusing on pollen analyses and past fire ecology for the reconstruction of human-environment interactions.

Listen here on Spotify!

Chris hard at work in the field. Photo used with permission from C. Kiahtipes.

Chris received his PhD from Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University in 2016, completed his first postdoc at the Institute for Prehistory and Early History, Research Center Africa, at the University of Cologne, Germany, and is currently a postdoc at the University of Florida.