Elliot Van Maldegem defended his PhD research in 2024 at the prehistoric archaeology research unit at Ghent University Department of Archaeology. His PhD research was focused on reconstructing population dynamics within the Scheldt basin of western Belgium and Northern France, between the Mesolithic and High Medieval periods, through a multiproxy approach using summed probability distributions of radiocarbon dates, site count analyses and human impact scores derived from pollen data. This research was part of a larger project analyzing phosphate concentrations in the Scheldt river. The analysis of population dynamics revealed what impact human activities had on phosphate concentrations through time.
He is now working on a junior FWO postdoc called "Playing with fire: Disentangling anthropogenic and climate induced fire events during the Late Glacial and Early Holocene in the sandy lowlands of Belgium and the southern Netherlands". This project aims to answer the question if hunter-gatherers actively shaped their environments through the use within Northern Belgium and the Southern Netherlands. This will be achieved by combining micro- and macrocharcoal analyses, on selected peat deposits in abandoned river channels and palaeolakes, with palaeodemographical modelling, high resolution chronological modelling, vegetation cover reconstructions and climate proxies. The resulting local and regional fire event reconstructions will make it possible to disentangle natural and human induced fire events.
In parallel (2025-2026), He is am working on the LEAP “Learning from the past. The impact of abrupt climate changes on society and environment in Belgium” project at the VUB. This project aims to see the impact of rapid climate change (RCC) events on the environment, human activities and human mobility, specifically by targeting the 9.3, 4.2 and 3.2 ka events. He is focused on the period between the Final Neolithic, Bronze Age and the transition to the Early Iron Age. He will model the palaeoclimatological data from speleothems, palaeoenvironmental data from peat bogs and palaeomobility data from human skeletal assemblages that has been collected during the LEAP project, together with palaeodemographical data from radiocarbon dates and sites counts. By modelling these datasets we hope to show the impact of RCC events on human population and the environment.
