Mike Charles

Professor Mike Charles is an academic at the University of Oxford, specializing in Environmental Archaeology. His research focuses on the origins and spread of agriculture, plant domestication, and human-environment interactions in Western Asia and Europe since the last glaciation. He can be contacted at michael.charles@arch.ox.ac.uk.

Research Interests: His work integrates archaeobotany, palynology, plant functional ecology, stable isotopes, plant ancient DNA analysis, and ethnoarchaeology to study early farming societies, the role of plants in prehistory, and ecological dynamics of arable weeds.

• ERC Advanced Grant (2017-2020): Feeding Anglo-Saxon England - The Bioarchaeology of an Agricultural Revolution
• ERC Advanced Grant (2011-2016): Evolutionary Origins of Agriculture
• NERC Grant (2010-2013): Origins of Agriculture - An Ecological Perspective on Crop Domestication
• National Science Foundation (USA) (2007-2010): Economic Integration and Cultural Survival at Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey
• NERC Grant (2008-2011): Out of Asia

Doctoral Supervision: He has supervised numerous PhD students across diverse topics, including Neolithic settlements in Jordan, Bronze Age agriculture in Anatolia, and wetland agroecology in China.

• Tell Nebi Mend Archaeobotanical Project (2016-present) | Oxford University
• Ur Archaeological Project (2014-present) | SUNY, New York
• Central Zagros Archaeological Project (2011-present) | University of Reading
• Çatalhöyük Neolithic Excavations (2003-present) | Stanford University
• Tell Brak, Syria (1998-present) | Cambridge University & Metropolitan Museum, New York