Postdoctoral Position in Environmental Sciences

Universität Basel

Schweiz

Employment Rate: 70%
Duration: 1 year with possibility of extension

The University of Basel, Department of Ancient Civilizations, invites applications for a postdoctoral position in Environmental / Landscape Archaeology, tenable from September 2026 (negotiable), within the SNSF-funded project:

“The Roman Villa as Ecosystem: Climate, Production, and Society in the Sabina Tiberina”

Principal Investigator: Sabine Huebner

The position is specifically directed at candidates with expertise in the environmental archaeology of central Italy, and ideally with prior field or research experience in the Sabina Tiberina or adjacent regions.

The Project

The project situates Roman villa sites within their broader environmental and landscape context between ca. 300 BCE and 600 CE. It investigates how changing land-use regimes, subsistence strategies, and rural production systems responded to climatic variability and long-term environmental change.

The successful candidate will play a central role in linking site-based evidence from villa contexts to regional patterns of land use, vegetation, and settlement.

Your Position

The core responsibilities center on the development and application of a landscape-archaeological framework that situates the project's villa sites within regional settlement and land-use dynamics in the Sabina Tiberina (300 BCE–600 CE).

This includes:

close engagement with legacy survey datasets, such as the Tiber Valley Project and comparable regional studies;
integration of archaeological evidence with published environmental and palaeoclimate data;
diachronic reconstruction of land use, vegetation, and subsistence regimes (e.g. mixed farming, olive cultivation, viticulture);
assessment of the impact of climatic variability on agricultural production and rural settlement stability.

The postholder will also be expected to:

contribute actively to the project’s publication strategy;
prepare articles for international peer-reviewed journals;
participate in summer schools and outreach activities;
participate in field campaigns.

Depending on experience, the candidate may also take on a coordinating role in archaeological implementation.

Your Profile

Applicants should hold:

a PhD in Environmental Archaeology, Landscape Archaeology, Geography, or a closely related field.

Candidates should demonstrate:

experience in Mediterranean landscape archaeology;
familiarity with central Italian survey traditions (highly desirable);
ability to work confidently across scales, from micro-contextual environmental data to regional landscape reconstruction;
ability to integrate environmental proxies into historical interpretation.

A strong research interest in:

ancient rural economies,
subsistence agriculture,
and human–environment interactions

is essential.

Language Requirement

Excellent command of English.

We Offer You

The position offers a stimulating research environment at the Department of Ancient Civilizations, which houses one of the world’s leading research libraries in Classical Studies and maintains many international collaborations.

The Institute of Ancient History hosts the:

Basel Climate Science & Ancient History Lab

directed by Sabine R. Huebner and accommodates multiple ongoing large-scale research projects.

The position provides:

integration into a highly collaborative research environment;
the opportunity to develop an independent research profile at the intersection of environmental archaeology and ancient history;
a research focus on land-use dynamics and climate–society interactions in central Italy.

Employment conditions follow the regulations of the University of Basel.