Staff profile

Professor Patricia L. Fall

Charles La Trobe Professorial Fellow of Geography

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

School of Historical and European Studies

Martin Building 143, Melbourne (Bundoora)

 

Qualifications

BA Prescott College, MS Arizona, PhD Arizona

Area of study

Archaeology

Brief Profile

Professor Pat Fall studies past environments in a variety of geographic settings, including tropical rain forests on Pacific and Caribbean islands and the semi-arid and arid environments of the eastern Mediterranean basin. She specializes in the analysis of pollen and plant macrofossils from small lakes and bogs to reconstruct past environments, as well as carbonized seeds and wood from archaeological deposits. Recently Professor Fall has expanded her research to:  1) modelling modern and past vegetation and climate in the eastern Mediterranean, and 2) using GIS and remote sensing to study landscape change.  Prior to coming to La Trobe in July 2012, Pat was Professor of Geography at Arizona State University.

Research interests

Archaeology of Asia, Africa and the Americas

- Human impacts

- Palaeoecology of tropical rain forests on Pacific and Caribbean islands

- Pollen and seed disposal

Archaeology of Europe, the Mediterranean and the Levant

- Human impact on ancient environments

- Palaeoenvironments during the rise and collapse of urban societies

- Vegetation and climate modeling in the eastern Mediterranean

Recent Publications

  • Falconer, S.E. and P.L. Fall. In press. Spatial patterns, households and community behavior at Bronze Age Politiko-Troullia, Cyprus. Journal of Field Archaeology.
  • Falconer, S.E . and P.L. Fall. In press. Agricultural economies and pyrotechnologies in Bronze Age Jordan and Cyprus, in Archaeological Studies in Environment and Technology: Intersections and Transformations, edited by D. Frankel, J. Webb and S. Lawrence. New York: Routledge.
  • Fall, P.L. (2012). Modern vegetation, pollen and climate on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 185:79-92. doi:10.1016/j.revpalbo.2012.08.002.
  • Fall, P.L., S.E. Falconer, C. S. Galletti, T. Shirmang, E. Ridder, J. Klinge (2012) Long-term agrarian landscapes in the Troodos Foothills, Cyprus. Journal of Archaeological Science 39: 2335-2347. doi: 10.1016/j.jas.2012.02.010.
  • Fall, P.L. and T.D. Drezner (2011) Plant Dispersal, Introduced Species and Vegetation Change in the South Pacific Kingdom of Tonga. Pacific Science 65(2): 143-156. doi: 10.2984/65.2.143.
  • Fall, P.L. (2010) Pollen evidence for plant introductions in a Polynesian tropical island ecosystem, Kingdom of Tonga. In S. G. Haberle, J. Stevenson & M. Prebble (eds), Altered Ecologies: Fire, Climate and Human Influence on Terrestrial Landscapes, Terra Australis 32:253-271. ANU Press.
  • Sherman, J.A. and P.L. Fall (2010) Observations on feeding frequencies among native and exotic birds and fruit bats at Erythina variegata and Dysoxylum trees in American Samoa. In S. G. Haberle, J. Stevenson & M. Prebble (eds), Altered Ecologies: Fire, Climate and Human Influence on Terrestrial Landscapes, Terra Australis 32:101-116. ANU Press.
  • Klinge, J. and P.L. Fall (2010) A paleoethnobotanical analysis of Bronze Age land use and land cover in the eastern Mediterranean. Journal of Archaeological Science 37: 2622-2629.
  • Falconer, S.E. and P.L. Fall (2009) Settling the valley: Agrarian settlement and interaction along the Jordan Rift during the Bronze Age, in A Timeless Vale: Archaeological and related essays on the Jordan Valley in honour of Gerrit van der Kooji on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, edited by E. Kaptijn and L. Petit, pp. 97-108. Archaeological Studies Leiden University 19. Leiden: Leiden University Press.
  • Swoveland, T. and P.L. Fall (2009) Analysis of deuterium from fossil pollen to reconstruct paleoclimates. Journal of the Arizona-Nevada Academy of Science 41(2): 85-90.
  • Fall, P.L., S. E. Falconer, M. Horowitz, J. Hunt, M. C. Metzger & Derek Ryter (2008) Bronze Age settlement and landscape of Politiko-Troullia, 2005-2007. Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus, 2008: 183-208.
  • Falconer, S. E. and P.L. Fall (2007) Bronze Age Rural Ecology and Village Life at Tell el-Hayyat, Jordan. British Archaeological Reports, International Series 1586, Oxford (ISBN 1 84171 799 1), 218 printed pages, 178 figures, 37 tables and 3,205 pages of appendices on CD.
  • Fall, P.L., T.D. Drezner and J. Franklin (2007) Dispersal ecology of the lowland rain forest in the Vava’u island group, Kingdom of Tonga. New Zealand Journal of Botany, 45(2): 393-417.
  • Fall, P.L., S.E. Falconer and P.C. Edwards (2007) Living on the edge: settlement and abandonment on the Dead Sea Plain, in Crossing Jordan: North American Contributions to the Archaeology of Jordan, edited by T.E. Levy, P.M.M. Daviau, R.W. Younker and M. Shaer, pp. 225-232. London: Equinox Publishing.
  • Falconer, S.E., P.L. Fall and J.E. Jones (2007) Life at the foundation of Bronze Age Civilization: agrarian villages in the Jordan Valley, in Crossing Jordan: North American Contributions to the Archaeology of Jordan, edited by T.E. Levy, P.M.M. Daviau, R.W. Younker and M. Shaer, pp. 261-268. London: Equinox Publishing.
  • Fall, P.L. (2005) Vegetation change in the coastal-lowland rainforest at Avai’o’vuna Swamp, Vava’u, Kingdom of Tonga.  Quaternary Research, 64: 451-459.
  • Falconer, S.E., P.L. Fall, T.W. Davis, M.T. Horowitz and J. Hunt (2005) Initial archaeological investigations at Politiko-Troullia, 2004. Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus 2005: 69-85.

Research projects

  • Long-term dynamics and resilience of terrestrial plant and animal communities in the Bahamas.
  • Human impacts on tropical rain forests.
  • Long-term formation of natural and human landscapes in the Middle East.
  • Modeling vegetation and past environments in the eastern Mediterranean. 
  • Bronze Age Village Life and Landscape Dynamics at Politiko-Troullia, Cyprus.