Natalia Riabogina

About Natalia Riabogina

Dr Natalia Riabogina (Ryabogina) studies pollen and plant remains at archaeological sites and nearby natural archives. She focuses on elucidating the complex relationships between climate, plant communities (including economically important species) and human adaptive responses. Her research has covered shifts from foraging to agricultural economies, and the broad area in between. She is also exploring the ways in which agricultural intensification and associated demographic growth have driven further shifts in vegetation communities and landscape transformation from the Neolithic to modern times. Her studies cover much of the northern part of the temperate zone of Eurasia, with projects in northern Eurasia, central Europe, the northern Caucasus, central Asia, western Siberia and the Russian Far East. More recently, she has focused on reconstructing vegetation history and climate change, and identifying the stages of anthropogenic impact, including evidence of deforestation, agriculture and grazing pressure in the North Caucasus. Natalia has conducted research at the Russian Academy of Sciences (Department of Archaeological and Environmental Reconstructions at the Tyumen Scientific Centre of the Siberian Branch RAS and the Department of Archaeological Soil Science at the Pushchino Scientific Centre for Biological Research RAS), as well as during the DAAD research stay at the Archaeobotanical Laboratory of the University of Heidelberg (Germany) and the Fulbright research stay at Washington University in St. Louis (USA). She joined the COREX project to continue the accumulation of archaeobotanical datasets and to move from correlating large and diverse datasets to modelling and explaining the cultural diversity of Europe.