Professor Mike Charles

Research Profile

Research Grants

2017-20

ERC Advanced grant Feeding Anglo-Saxon England: The Bioarchaeology of an Agricultural Revolution. P.I Prof Helena Hamerow, CI Prof Amy Bogaard, Dr Richard Thomas (Leicester)

2011-16

ERC Advanced Grant. Evolutionary Origins of Agriculture
Co-investigator with Prof G Jones, Prof. M Rees, Dr C Osborne, Dr N Fieller (Sheffield) & Prof T Brown (Manchester). ERC-2010-AdG_20100407

2010-13

NERC. Origins of Agriculture: an ecological perspective on crop domestication. Co-investigator with Profs G. Jones & M Rees & Dr C Osborne. NE/H0227161/1.

2007-10

National Science Foundation (USA). Economic integration and cultural survival at neolithic Çatalhöyük Turkey. Co-investigator with Dr. K Twiss, SUNY, USA and Dr Bogaard, (Oxford).

2008-11

NERC. Out of Asia. Co-investigator with Profs G Jones, C Buck & P Blackwell (Sheffield). NE/E019242/1.

 


Archaeobotanical Projects

2016-

Tell Nebi Mend Archaeobotanical Project (Oxford University) with Dr Jade Whitlam

2014-

Ur Archaeological Project, directors Prof Elisabeth Stone & Prof Paul Zimansky, (SUNY, New York)

2011-

Central Zagros Archaeological Project, directors Prof. Roger Matthews and Dr Wendy Matthews (University of Reading)

2003-

Çatalhöyük Neolithic excavations, director Prof. Ian Hodder (Stanford University)

1998-

Tell Brak, Syria; Bronze Age; director Dr Augusta McMahon (Cambridge University) & Dr. Geoff Emberling (Metropolitan Museum, New York, USA)

 

 

Publications
Teaching

Postgraduate teaching

Postgraduate taught course options in: 

Doctoral Supervision

I am happy to supervise on farming societies of western Asia; origins and spread of agriculture; plant domestication; the role of plants in prehistory; crop/livestock integration; palynological approaches to past land use systems. Establishing impact of preservation processes on plant material.

Current students

Reconstructing the ecology and chronology of Neolithic agropastoral management at Dispilio, Lake Orestias
Doris Vidas | DPhil Archaeological Science | Supervisors: Amy Bogaard, Amy Styring and Mike Charles
Investigating changing subsistence strategies during the Neolithic in the Southwestern Balkans
Amy Holguin | DPhil Archaeological Science | Supervisors: Mike Charles and Amy Bogaard
Early rice agriculture in Bangladesh: methodological and archaeobotanical perspectives
Mizanur Rahman | DPhil Archaeological Science | Supervisors: Mike Charles and Amy Bogaard
Relating Fluvial and Social Dynamics in pre-Hispanic Nicaragua: Archaeological study of human adaptation to the Mayales River basin
Irene Torreggiani | DPhil Archaeology | Supervisors: Alexander Geurds, Mike Charles and William Harvey
An integrated study of Neolithic wetland agroecology in the Lower Yangtze river basin, China
Rubi Wu | DPhil Archaeology | Supervisors: Mike Charles and Amy Bogaard

Past students

'For a quart of ale is a dish for a king'? Malting, brewing and beer in the Mid Anglo-Saxon period: a case study of Sedgeford
Hannah Caroe (2023) ORA | DPhil Archaeological Science | Supervisors: Mike Charles and Amy Bogaard
‘To call each thing by its right name?’ Exploring the potential of geometric morphometrics to interpret the diversity of archaeobotanical wheat grains
Tina Roushannafas (2022) ORA | DPhil Archaeology | Supervisors: Amy Bogaard and Mike Charles
Agriculture and citadel in the Bronze Age Aegean: the view from Western Anatolia
Tom Maltas (2021) ORA | DPhil Archaeological Science | Supervisors: Mike Charles and Amy Bogaard
The agricultural economies of early urban systems in the northern Fertile Crescent
Hyunyoung Kim (2019) ORA | DPhil Archaeological Science | Supervisors: Mike Charles and Amy Bogaard
Feeding the City: a comparative study of agricultural production in Bronze Age urban systems of Western Asia
Charlotte Diffey (2018) ORA | DPhil Archaeology | Supervisors: Mike Charles and Amy Bogaard
Assessing the nature of early farming in Neolithic Western Asia: a functional ecological approach to emerging arable weeds
Laura Green (2018) ORA | DPhil Archaeology | Supervisors: Mike Charles and Amy Bogaard
An Archaeobotanical investigation into the Chalcolithic economy and social organisation of central Anatolia
Elizabeth Stroud (2016) ORA | DPhil Archaeology | Supervisors: Mike Charles and Amy Bogaard

Key words: bioarchaeology, farming and herding, domestication, land use, urbanisation, woodlands, later prehistory, W Asia, Europe, Eurasia