Jennifer Pournelle

My research focuses on the environmental dimensions of social and cultural change in wetland environments, especially regarding urban origins and sustainability in deltaic settings. Past and ongoing work interprets air photography and satellite imagery toward landscape reconstruction through time. Future work will study past and present strategies for biomass energy extraction from natural environments.

Experience includes arms control, information technology, and training consultancy in Europe and the Middle East, and fieldwork in Malaysia, Italy, southeastern Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, the Republic of Georgia, and Azerbaijan, including research financed by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Geographic Society, the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, the University of California Office of Research, and as an American School of Oriental Research Mesopotamian Fellow. Keywords: Landscape archaeology, anthropological archaeology, complex societies, cultural ecology, historical ecology, Middle East.