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Highlights

Seasonal Oyster Collection by Gullah/Geechee Communities of the American Southeast through Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS)

A new student-led research project examining seasonal oyster harvesting by Gullah/Geechee communities on Ossabaw Island, Georgia, before and after Emancipation. Using laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) on archaeological oyster shells, the study compares enslaved and post-Emancipation contexts. Preliminary results show consistent winter–spring harvesting across both periods, suggesting enduring ecological, health, and cultural constraints. The work highlights oysters’ role in Gullah/Geechee subsistence and demonstrates LIBS as a powerful method for reconstructing past harvesting practices
Last updated on Dec 17, 2025 8 min read SEAFRONT
Seasonal Oyster Collection by Gullah/Geechee Communities of the American Southeast through Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS)

Calibrating the limpet

Our new study delivers the most extensive calibration to date of Patella caerulea (the Mediterranean limpet) as a recorder of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) across the Central and Eastern Mediterranean. The study combined laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) for measuring Mg/Ca ratios with isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) to analyse oxygen isotope values (δ18O). By analysing 131 modern shells from 22 sites, we explored the relationship between magnesium-to-calcium (Mg/Ca) ratios and oxygen isotope values as palaeotemperature proxies.
Last updated on Oct 31, 2025 2 min read SEAFRONT
Calibrating the limpet

Limpets and Mussels from Tierra del Fuego

Alejandro León Cristóbal is a doctoral researcher from the University of La Rioja (Spain). He does research in marine mollusc shells, ethnoarchaeology, oxygen isotope analysis, Palaeolithic Archaeology and Mesolithic-Neolithic Transition. The main objective in his doctoral thesis is to improve the understanding of the last hunter-gatherer-fisher societies of the Cantabrian Region.
Last updated on Apr 23, 2025 3 min read
Limpets and Mussels from Tierra del Fuego

SEAFRONT

(Short-term and Extreme climates causing Agricultural risks at the FRontier Of the Neolithic Transition)

Welcome to the website of the SEAFRONT project, a research group awarded by the DFG under the Emmy-Noether programme for a six-year period, involving research collaborations between the Leibniz Zentrum für Archäologie (LEIZA) and archaeologists in Greece, Spain, Denmark, Australia, and France.

Our research is concerned with bridging the gap between temporal and spatial scales of climatic changes and human responses. The decisions of prehistoric individuals were often based on how they perceived their immediate environment and can thus only insufficiently be connected to remote climate archives on decadal- or centennial scales (e.g. marine cores or glacial records).

We are tackling this problem in the context of the Neolithic Dispersal across the Mediterranean, when pioneering farmers were advancing to new shores with a variety of success. Climatic conditions and the resulting agricultural risks are one part of this success, but differences in spatial and temporal resolution make their immediate impact intangible.

This project is using seasonally resolved climatic data from within archaeological layers in the form of mollusc shells, and is thus directly accessing local weather conditions that were observable by prehistoric populations.
Using Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy, we are aiming to analyse over 4,000 shells across 5 sites to provide robust climatic models from the bottom up and in stratigraphic context with other archaeological information.

The second phase of the project will be the 1st of February 2024 with new job applications published in advance.
For any question related to the project, please get in touch via email or twitter (see contact details below).

News

Autumn Update

We have been busy in the last few months and decided to give you an overview of all the things we did in one go, so that not a single output gets forgotten. This includes several trips of our team, but also guests coming to visit us at LEIZA.
Last updated on Dec 4, 2024 5 min read SEAFRONT
Autumn Update

Starting the OtoLIBS Project: Our visit to IESL-FORTH in Crete

The team working with the LIBS system at the IESL lab. (left to right: Maria Eleni Konstantinou, Danai Theodoraki, Aggelos Philippidis, Rosa Arniz-Mateos, Panagiotis Siozos, Victor Piñón, Demetrios Anglos, Niklas Hausmann). During our two-week visit, we had the opportunity to collaborate with the Photonics for Heritage Science (PhoHS) group as part of the new OtoLIBS project (Otoliths analysis using Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy).
Last updated on Oct 18, 2024 2 min read
Starting the OtoLIBS Project: Our visit to IESL-FORTH in Crete
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Publications

Multi-regional calibration of Patella caerulea as a palaeothermometer using oxygen isotope values and Mg/Ca ratios

This study presents a comprehensive calibration of the Patella caerulea as a palaeotemperature archive across the Central and Eastern Mediterranean, focusing on Mg/Ca ratios and δ^18^O values.
Danai Theodoraki, Marcello Mannino, Amy L. Prendergast, Bernd Schöne, Niklas Hausmann
PDF Project DOI
Multi-regional calibration of Patella caerulea as a palaeothermometer using oxygen isotope values and Mg/Ca ratios

A comparative analysis of elemental imaging of marine mollusc shells using Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy

We studied modern limpet shells using laser-based (LIBS) analysis in two labs to better understand how shell chemistry reflects past sea temperatures. By creating detailed elemental maps, we tested how different methods and lab setups affect results. We found that variation in shell data is mostly due to natural limpet growth patterns, not the measurement technique. This is important for improving the reliability of shell-based climate reconstructions in archaeology and palaeoenvironmental research.
Jesús Mirapeix, Rosa Arniz-Mateos, Danai Theodoraki, Asier García-Escárzaga, Víctor Piñon, Igor Gutierrez-Zugasti, Niklas Hausmann, Adolfo Cobo
PDF Project DOI
A comparative analysis of elemental imaging of marine mollusc shells using Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy

Oyster shells as archives of present and past environmental variability and life history traits

This review establishes oyster shells as high-resolution, multiproxy archives for reconstructing environmental variability and life history traits. It highlights recent methodological innovations, challenges in growth pattern interpretation, and the significance of integrating geochemical proxies across disciplines including palaeoclimatology, archaeology, and aquaculture science.
Vincent Mouchi, C. Fred T. Andrus, Antonio G. Checa, Mary Elliot, Erika Griesshaber, Niklas Hausmann, Damien Huyghe, Franck Lartaud, Melita Peharda, Niels J. de Winter
PDF Project DOI
Oyster shells as archives of present and past environmental variability and life history traits
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This and other projects

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SeaFront

Short-term and Extreme climates causing Agricultural risks at the FRontier Of the Neolithic Transition

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ACCELERATE

ArChaeological and Climatic data from ELEmental ratios using Rapid Analysis of shell carbonaTE

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DISPERSE Project

Dynamic Landscapes, Coastal Environments and Human Dispersals.

Niklas Hausmann

Niklas Hausmann

Emmy Noether Group Leader

Leibniz Zentrum für Archäologie (LEIZA)

Niklas is a coastal archaeologist at LEIZA leading the Emmy Noether project SEAFRONT and specialises in the analysis of high-resolution climate archives found in mollusc shells.

Niklas did his PhD at the University of York as part of Geoff Bailey's ERC Project DISPERSE, where he studied the mobility and subsistence strategies of coastal populations in the southern Red Sea. His research on the seasonal consumption of shellfish, which had led to the accumulation of over 3,000 shell middens on the Farasan Islands (Saudi Arabia), involved the analysis of oxygen isotope ratios to reconstruct past sea surface temperatures and to reveal seasons of mollusc collections.

This research led Niklas to move to Greece on a Marie Curie fellowship at the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser, where he led the ACCELERATE Project. Within this project, he aimed to make the geochemical analysis of mollusc shells more efficient through the use of Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS).
His research now involves shells from all over the world including the UK, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Greece, Turkey, Malta, Tunisia, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Japan, the Philippines, Tasmania, New Zealand, the US, Canada, and Brazil, with shells from the modern period as well as over 30,000 years old.

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