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SeaChanges

Context

SeaChanges is an international doctoral training network spanning archaeology and marine biology, which supports 15 fully-funded PhD projects across seven institutions in 6 countries. The network takes a long-term perspective on human exploitation of marine vertebrates, with projects covering species from herring to sperm whale, timescales from decades to millennia, and all of Europe's seas and beyond.

Aims and Objectives

SeaChanges has four key aims:

  1. To develop a truly interdisciplinary training platform, breaking down boundaries between archaeological & biological sciences.
  2. To improve understanding of the time depth of human use of and impact on key European marine species.
  3. To train a cohort of researchers who can communicate across disciplinary and sectoral boundaries.
  4. To increase cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral awareness of the potential of long-term perspectives in marine ecology.
Key York Contacts

Dr David Orton (PI) 

Dr Catherine Taylor (Project Manager) - seachanges-project@york.ac.uk

Principal and Co-Investigators

Principal Invetstigator

Dr David Orton (BioArCh, Department of Archaeology, University of York)

Co-Investigators

Prof James Barrett, (Department of Archaeology and Cultural History, Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

Dr Canan Çakırlar (Department of Archaeology, University of Groningen)

Dr Tamsin O'Connell (Department of Archaeology, Cambridge)

Prof Graham Pierce (CSIC Institute of Marine Research, Vigo)

Dr Bastiaan Star (CEES - Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, Oslo)

Dr Morten Tange Olsen (Globe Institute, Copenhagen)

Prof Fausto Tinti (Department of Biological, Geological & Environmental Sciences, University of Bologna)

Principal Funder

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 813383.

External Partners

University of Groningen

University of Cambridge

CSIC Institute of Marine Research (Vigo)

University of Oslo

University of Copenhagen

University of Bologna

And around 30 additional academic and non-academic partners across Europe and beyond.

Research Outputs

Andrews et al. 2022. Exploitation history of Atlantic bluefin tuna in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean—insights from ancient bones. 

Andrews et al. 2021. Ancient DNA SNP-panel data suggests stability in bluefin tuna genetic diversity despite centuries of fluctuating catches in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean. 

Atmore et al. 2021. Shifting Baselines to Thresholds: Reframing Exploitation in the Marine Environment. 

Ferrari et al. 2021. An accurate assignment test for extremely low-coverage whole-genome sequence data. 

Martínez-García et al. 2021. Historical Demographic Processes Dominate Genetic Variation in Ancient Atlantic Cod Mitogenomes. 

Winter et al. 2021. Potential applications of biomolecular archaeology to the ecohistory of sea turtles and groupers in Levant coastal antiquity.