Dr Lorena Becerra-Valdivia
BA, MSc, DPhil/PhD
Expertise
Current positions
Senior Research Associate
Department of Anthropology and Archaeology
Contact
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Research interests
I am an archaeological scientist and radiocarbon dating specialist, with MSc (2015) and DPhil (2020) degrees from the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford.
My research mainly involves the construction of reliable, high-resolution chronologies using radiocarbon dating and Bayesian modelling techniques, and focuses on the interface between past human occupations, ecology, and climate. Past projects include the establishment of timelines for hominin (modern humans and Neanderthals) dynamics during the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic Transition in the Zagros Mountains, the initial arrival of humans to North America around the Last Glacial Maximum, and human-environment-climate relationships in pre-Columbian Amazonia.
I've previously worked at the W.M. Keck Carbon Cycle Accelerator Mass Spectrometer (University of California, Irvine), Chronos 14Carbon Cycle (University of New South Wales, Sydney) and Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit (University of Oxford) facilities. I also have research & technical experience in stable isotope and organic residue analyses for archaeological applications.
My current project is a three-year (2023-2026) Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship, titled ‘The role of abrupt climatic shifts in the initial settlement of South America’. The aim of the project is to test the role of millennial-scale climatic phases, the Antarctic Cold Reversal and Greenland Stadial 1, in the early settlement of South America by synchronising archaeological and paleoclimatic data using chronometric methods.
Publications
Recent publications
13/03/2025Ancient Proboscidean-Ivory Artifacts from Northwestern Venezuela
PaleoAmerica
Climate influence on the early human occupation of South America during the late Pleistocene
Nature Communications
Landscape evolution of the Bolivian Amazon controlled by uplift events dated 13,000, 10,000 and 6000 cal yr BP
Quaternary Science Reviews
Human dietary diversity in the Colombian Andes at the terminal Pleistocene-late Holocene sites Tequendama and Aguazuque
iScience
The age and position of the southern boundary of prehistoric Polynesian dispersal
Archaeology in Oceania