Philip Riris

Philip Riris is a Senior Lecturer in Archaeological & Palaeoenvironmental Modelling at Bournemouth University's Institute for the Modelling of Socio-Environmental Transitions (IMSET), following postdoctoral work at the UCL Institute of Archaeology. His research integrates archaeology, historical ecology, and computational methods to investigate past human societies in tropical South America through extensive fieldwork across Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, and Oman.

Dr Riris earned his PhD in 2015 from the University of Southampton, focusing on hunter-gatherer land use in northern Argentina. His educational trajectory reflects deep specialization in quantitative archaeological methods and environmental reconstruction.

His research centers on two interconnected domains: coupled human-environmental systems and computational approaches to rock art and sacred landscapes. Employing spatial analysis and agent-based modeling, he draws from physical geography, quantitative ecology, and complex systems theory to explore how ancient populations interacted with environmental change. Recent work demonstrates how frequent disturbances enhanced societal resilience, revealing sophisticated adaptation strategies to climate pressures in prehistory. His methodologies bridge archaeological data with ecological theory to model long-term socio-environmental dynamics.

Analysis of his 2019-2024 publications reveals consistent focus on South American archaeology, particularly the Orinoco region and Amazonia. His work integrates computational techniques with traditional archaeological analysis to examine rock art sequences, demographic responses to climate change, and spatiotemporal patterns of cultural transmission. Key methodological contributions include developing resolution-aware approaches for cultural dispersal studies and formal resilience metrics for archaeological time series.

Dr Riris has secured major research funding including the AHRC-funded Comparative Legacies of Human Land Use in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (2023), British Academy's Connected Communities: Network approaches to rock art (2018), and Sainsbury Research Unit's Ancient Networks of Art project (2017). His external roles include Honorary Research Fellow at UCL Institute of Archaeology (2018-present) and visiting positions at Venezuelan and Argentinean research institutions. Media coverage of his work in National Geographic, Newsweek, and Archaeology Magazine highlights discoveries of monumental rock art in Venezuela and climate-demerography linkages in ancient South America.