Benutzer:Kurator71/Geraldine Finlayson

Geraldine Finlayson at John Mackintosh Square during the tercentenary commemoration of the Treaty of Utrecht, 13 July 2013

Geraldine Finlayson (* im 20. Jahrhundert in Gibraltar) ist eine gibraltaische Anthropologin. Sie war stellvertretende Leiterin der Abteilung Kulturerbeund Leiterin der Laboratorien des Gibraltar Museum, Direktorin des Institute for Gibraltarian Studies, sowie Direktorin der John Mackintosh Hall. Sie spielte eine bedeutende Rolle bei der Entwicklung der „Gibraltar-Methode“" für archäologische Forschung, insbesondere bei der Unterwasserarchäologie. Sie gehört außerdem zu einem Team von Wissenschaftlerin, das bedeutende Entdeckungen zur Kultur der Neandertaler machte.

Leben

Finlayson besuchte in Gibraltar eine Mädchenschule 2006 promovierte sie an der Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge mit der Dissertation "Climate, vegetation and biodiversity: a multiscale study of the south of the Iberian Peninsula."

Von 1981 bis 1993 arbeitete sie in der Verwaltung der Regierung gibraltars. Finlayson spezialisierte sich früh auf die Neanderter in Gibraltar und unternahm zahlreiche Ausgrabungen in der Region, darunter auch Unterwasser.

Von 1993 bis 2011 war Finlayson Direktorin des Kulturzentrums John Mackintosh Hall. Seit Oktober 2011 war sie stellvertretende Leiterin der Abteilugn Kulturerbe des Gibraltar Museums. Außerdem war sie Direktorin des „Institute for Gibraltarian Studies“ und dort als Wissenschaftlerin verantwortlich für das linguistische erbe Gibraltars und die Sammlung von mündlichen Überlieferungen über die Kolonialgeschichte.

Sie ist Co-Direktorin der Unterwasserforschungseinheit, deren Aufgabe die Erfassung des Meeresbodens und der Höhlen des Gibraltar Caves Project ist, die Leitung der Erfassung von Gibraltars Unterwassererbe für die Kulturerbedatenbank und die Erfassung von Schiffswracks und die Vorerkundung von archäologischen Fundplätzen.

Finlayson ist Taucherin und Tuachlehrerin, Lehrerin an der Nautical Archaeology Society und am Gibraltar Museum.

Forschungsinteressen

Finlaysons Forschungsinteresse gilt Gibraltar. Sie untersucht Zusammenhänge zwischen Klima, Vegetation, Landschaft und Biodiversität; äumliche und zeitliche Verteilungsmuster von Flora und Fauna, insbesondere im Süden der iberischen Halbinsel und im Quartär; sie untersuchte die kulturellen Einflüsse auf dei Küche Gibraltars. Zu ihren Forschungsxchwerpunkten gehört außerdem das kulturelle Erbe unter Wasser.

Other professional activities

Finlayson gave a talk entitled "The John Mackintosh Hall – 40 years on" on 13 April 2004, about the cultural and sports venue in Gibraltar.

At the sixth Iberian Quaternary Congress in 2006, Finlayson “presented an innovative method in which she reconstructed in fine detail the habitat of the Neanderthals outside Gorham’s Cave.”

In 2008, Finlayson, along with Prof. Clive Finlayson and Dr Darren Fa and Dr Geraldine Finlayson, visited Malta at the invitation of that nation's Superintendence of Cultural Heritage. The team examined an archaeological dig and provided advice on the work underway. They also discussed a possible long-term collaborative project applying the Gibraltar model to the Maltese islands.

Geraldine and Clive Finlayson gave a lecture on human evolution at the University of Granada in 2009. The lecture, entitled "The Luck of Man: the role of historical contingency in human evolution,” traced the history of the evolution of Homo sapiens.

In November 2010, Finlayson gave a lecture at the Annual Conference of the Nautical Archaeological Society (NAS) held at Portsmouth University in the UK. Her presentation concerned “the Gibraltar Method,” which had been developed by her and teammates in Gibraltar and which was now central to “the study and protection of submerged heritage.”

Finlayson made a guest appearance as herself, in the episode 48 ("Das dunkle Geheimnis der Neandertaler", 2012) of the first season of the Austrian TV series Terra Mater.

Finlayson gave a lecture in 2012 in Gibraltar as part of the series "Hidden Worlds and Our Intangible Heritage."

Finlayson gave representatives of the media a tour of Gorham's Cave during the annual expert exploration thereof in 2012.

“Lost world in Gibraltar”

Finlayson was one of the authors of a paper by “Key to a lost world in Gibraltar,” that was published in 2013 in Geomorphology, She explained to journalists that Gibraltar was once “a Mediterranean Serengeti” where “deer, wild horse and cattle grazed on the savannahs and were stalked by a strange mix of predators that included Spotted Hyaenas, Leopards, Brown Bears, Wolves and Lynxes. This was truly a bit of Africa in Europe.” Along with two earlier 2013 papers, this was described by Finlayson as ”a remarkable output of scientific literature for such a small institution as the Gibraltar Museum, comparable to the best research centres in European and North American universities....We have been working very hard to make Gibraltar a Centre of Excellence and we are getting there. We are grateful to the support that HM Government of Gibraltar has given us and we are optimistic that, with this backing, we can take Gibraltar to yet another level.”

Neanderthals' cognitive capacity

In September 2012, the Gibraltar Museum team, led by Clive Finlayson and including Geraldine Finlayson, published a paper in the journal PLOS One, “Birds of a feather,” which argued that “Neanderthals had cognitive capacity which permitted them to think symbolically possibly by the use of ornamentation." This was described by Clive Finlayson as "a huge step forward" in the understanding of Neanderthals. In short, the message was "that the Neanderthals were 'thinking people' and that they were able to extract from the environment," for example "by cutting the feathers and inner bones from the birds of prey they captured, leaving them with the outer shell, and using them as ornaments as has been the case in other cultures across the world."

Veröffentlichungen

Bücher

• The Coastal Shelf of the Mediterranean and Beyond: Corridor and Refugium for Human Populations in the Pleistocene (edited with Geoffrey Bailey, José S. Carrión, Darren A. Fa, Clive Finlayson, and Joaquín Rodríguez-Vidal)
• Biogeography of human colonisations and extinctions in the Pleistocene (with Clive Finlayson and Darren Fa)
• The Homo habitat niche: Using the avian fossil record to depict ecological characteristics of Palaeolithic Eurasian hominins (with Clive Finlayson et al.)
• Gibraltar at the end of the millennium: a portrait of a changing land (with Clive Finlayson), 1999

Essays

• "The Homo habitat niche: using the avian fossil record to depict ecological characteristics of Palaeolithic Eurasian hominins" (with Clive Finlayson, José Carrión, Kimberly Brown, Antonio Sánchez-Marco, Darren Fa, Joaquín Rodríguez-Vidal, Santiago Fernández, Elena Fierro, Marco Bernal-Gómez, Francisco Giles-Pacheco), Quaternary Science Reviews, vol. 30, no. 11, pp. 1525–1532, 2011.
• "Earliest Known Use of Marine Resources by Neanderthals" (with Miguel Cortés-Sánchez, Arturo Morales-Muñiz, María D. Simón-Vallejo, María C. Lozano-Francisco, José L. Vera-Peláez, Clive Finlayson, Joaquín Rodríguez-Vidal, Antonio Delgado-Huertas, Francisco J. Jiménez-Espejo, Francisca Martínez-Ruiz, M. Aranzazu Martínez-Aguirre, Arturo J. Pascual-Granged), PLOS One, vol. 6, no. 9, 2011.
• "A coastal reservoir of biodiversity for Upper Pleistocene human populations: palaeoecological investigations in Gorham's Cave (Gibraltar) in the context of the Iberian Peninsula" (with J. S. Carrión, C. Finlayson, S. Fernández, E. Allué, J. A. López-Sáez, P. López-García, G. Gil-Romera, G. Bailey, P. González-Sampériz). Quaternary Science Reviews, vol. 27, no. 23, pp. 2118–2135, 2008.
• "Caves as archives of ecological and climatic changes in the Pleistocene—The case of Gorham's cave, Gibraltar" (with C. Finlayson, F. Giles Pacheco, J. Rodriguez Vidal, J. S. Carrión, J. M. Recio Espejo). Quaternary International, vol. 181, no. 1, pp. 55–63, 2008.
• ”Gorham's Cave, Gibraltar—The persistence of a Neanderthal population” (with Clive Finlayson, Darren A. Fa, Francisco Jiménez Espejo, Jóse S. Carrión, Francisco Giles Pacheco, Joaquín Rodríguez Vidal, Chris Stringer, Francisca Martínez Ruiz). Quaternary International – QUATERN INT, vol. 181, no. 1, pp. 64–71, 2008.
• ”The coastal shelf of the Mediterranean and beyond: Corridor and refugium for human populations in the Pleistocene” (with Geoff Bailey, José S. Carrión, Darren A. Fa, Clive Finlayson, Joaquín Rodríguez-Vidal). Quaternary Science Reviews, vol. 27, no. 23, pp. 2095–2099, 2008.
• ”Dynamics of a thermo-Mediterranean coastal environment – the Coto Doñana National Park” (with Clive Finlayson, J. M. Recio Espejo). Quaternary Science Reviews, vol. 27, no. 23, pp. 2145–2152, 2008.
• ”Climate forcing and Neanderthal extinction in Southern Iberia: insights from a multiproxy marine record” (with Francisco J. Jiménez-Espejo, Francisca Martínez-Ruiz, Clive Finlayson, Adina Paytan, Tatsuhiko Sakamoto, Miguel Ortega-Huertas, Koichi Iijima, David Gallego-Torres, Darren Fa). Quaternary Science Reviews, vol. 26, no. 7, pp. 836–852, 2007.
• ”Did the moderns kill off the Neanderthals? A reply to F. d’Errico and Sánchez Goñi” (with Clive Finlayson, Darren A. Fa, Francisco Giles Pacheco, Joaquin Rodrı́guez Vidal). Quaternary Science Reviews, vol. 23, no. 9, pp. 1205–1209, 2004.
• ”Did the moderns kill off the Neanderthals? A reply to F. d'Errico and Sanchez Goni” (with C. Finlayson, D. A. Fa, F. G. Pacheco, J. R. Vidal). Quaternary Science Reviews, vol. 23, pp. 1205–1209, 2004.
• ”Ecological transitions — But for whom? A perspective from the Pleistocene” (with Clive Finlayson, Antonio Monclova, José S. Carrión, Darren A. Fa, Joaquín Rodríguez-Vidal, Elena Fierro, Santiago Fernández, Marco Bernal-Gómez, Francisco Giles-Pacheco). Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology.
• ”The tools of the last Neanderthals: Morphotechnical characterisation of the lithic industry at level IV of Gorham’s Cave, Gibraltar” (with Francisco Giles Pacheco, Francisco J. Giles Guzmán, José María Gutiérrez López, Antonio Santiago Pérez, Clive Finlayson, Joaquín Rodríguez Vidal, Darren A. Fa). Quaternary International.
• ”El registro altitudinal de cambio climático en series kársticas pleistocenas de las Béticas occidentales Evidence of climate change at different altitudes within the karstic regions of the western Betic Range during the Late Pleistocene” (with J. Rodríguez-Vidal, L. M. Cáceres, A. Martínez-Aguirre, J. M. Alcaraz, C. Finlayson).

Honors and awards

In 2003 Finlayson and the rest of the Gibraltar Museum team were awarded first prize in the National Archeological Society’s “Adopt-a-Wreck” programme for their work on the armed trawler HMS Erin, and in 2006 Geraldine was granted the Gibraltar Award in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List

Personal life

Finlayson's husband, Clive Finlayson, is an evolutionary ecologist who is also connected to the Gibraltar Museum and who, along with his wife, participates in digs in the Neanderthal caves in Gibraltar and elsewhere. He keeps a blog about these activities at clivehumanevo.blogspot.com, and they have collaborated on many papers and other writings. He is the author of the book Neanderthals and Modern Humans. They have a son together.

Weblinks

• Gibraltar Museum in Granada University
• Preparations underway for a major excavation at Gorham’s and Vanguard Caves. Abgerufen im 1. Januar 1