UCL  IRIS
Institutional Research Information Service
UCL Logo
Please report any queries concerning the funding data grouped in the sections named "Externally Awarded" or "Internally Disbursed" (shown on the profile page) to your Research Finance Administrator. Your can find your Research Finance Administrator at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/finance/research/rs-contacts.php by entering your department
Please report any queries concerning the student data shown on the profile page to:

Email: portico-services@ucl.ac.uk

Help Desk: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ras/portico/helpdesk
 More search options
Prof Dorian Fuller
311
Institute of Archaeology, 31-34 Gordon Square
Institute of Archaeology, 31-34 Gordon Square
London
UK
WC1H 0PY
Prof Dorian Fuller profile picture
Appointment
  • Professor of Archaeobotany
  • Institute of Archaeology Gordon Square
  • Institute of Archaeology
  • Faculty of S&HS
Biography

Dorian Q Fuller (born Rolla, Missouri, USA) isProfessor of Archaeobotany and joint director of the International Centre for ChineseHeritage and Archaeology. He began teaching at UCL since completing his PhD atCambridge in 2000. He has worked widely in archaeobotany and archaeologicalfield projects across the Old World, in parts of Africa, including numerousfield projects in fieldwork projects in many parts of India (since1997), Sudan(since 1997), China (since 2004), Ethiopia (since 2011), Turkey (Ҫatalhöyük, 2011-2017),Iraqi Kurdistan (since 2014), as well as field projects in Thailand, Myanmar,Morocco, Spain, Gibralter, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. His fieldwork has focusedon archaeobotanical sampling of archaeological sites aimed to fill in key gapsin direct evidence for past agriculture.  His laboratory work focuses onplant macro-remains, but sometimes includes archaeological wood charcoal,phytoliths and parenchyma. In addition to working on plant assemblages fromcountries listed above under fieldwork, he has carried out or supervisedlaboratory on archaeobotanical assemblages from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam,Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Benin, Mali, Mauretania, Senegal, Libya,Kazakhstan, Iran, Israel, Italy, Britain, Ireland, Serbia, Caribbean, Chile, Hehas also carried out some ceramic analyses (from India and Sudan). He has alsocarried out botanical and ethnobotanical fieldwork, especially in the study ofwild and cultivated rice ecologies.


Dorian’s majorresearch projects have includes more than a decade on research on early rice.The Early rice project (2009-2019) was funded through 3 grants from the NaturalEnvironment Research Council. This project has improved methods and evidencefor the evolution and spread of rice agricultural systems throughout Asia, andhow these have impacted social and environmental change, including prehistoricincreases in the greenhouse gas methane that came from rice. Another majorproject was the ERC-funded "Comparative Pathways to AgricultureProject" (2013-2018), which compared domestication trajectories for morethan 30 crops across different regions of Asia and Africa. 

He is author of Treesand Woodlands of South India. Archaeological Perspectives (2008) and aco-editor of Far From the Hearth: Studies in Honour of Martin Jones(2019), Archaeology of African Plant Use (2014) and Climates, Landscapesand Civilizations (2012). He was one of founding editors of the journal Archaeologicaland Anthropological Sciences, which he edited from 2008-2020. He is on thecommittee of the International Work Group for Archaeobotany; and the committeeof the Sudan Archaeological Research Society. He held a Japanese Society forthe Promotion of Science visiting professorship in Kyoto in 2007. He has taughtcourses as a visiting Professor at Peking University, ShandongUniversity,  Sichuan University and Northwest University in China. He is UK director (since 2012) of the International Centre for Chinese Heritageand Archaeology, joint centre of UCL and Peking university established in 2004.He is an Honorary Professor at the School of Cultural Heritage at NorthwestUniversity in Xi’an

Research Summary

Archaeobotany; Environmental Archaeology; origins ofagriculture; domestication; crop evolution; cereals, legumes, fruits andvegeculture; weed ecology; agricultural intensification; dispersal of crops andagricultural systems; crop-processing; cooking and culinary traditions; climatechange and Early Anthropocene; fuel use and deforestation.

Regional cultural history of Sudan, Ethiopia, India,Neolithic China and Southeast Asia, Circum-Indian Ocean archaeology.

Co-director of Shaqadud Project (Sudan)- Alternative formsof cultural adaptation to mid-Holocene desiccation, in collaboration with LadislavVaradzin, Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague

Co-director of the Early Enset project- Evolutionarydynamics of vegetative agriculture in the Ethiopian Highlands: integratingarchaeobotanical and genomic science (funded by the Natural EnvironmentResearch Council 2022-24), in collaboration with Kew Botanical Gardens (Dr. PaulWilkins, Dr. James Borrell, Dr. Philippa Ryan) and University of Addis Ababa (Dr.Alemseged Beldados, Dr. Ermias Lulekal)

Director (UK) of the International Centre for Chinese Heritageand Archaeology (UCL and Peking University)

Teaching Summary
Dorian is Professor of Archaeobotany. He has taught undergraduate and postgraduate modules on methods and theory in Environmental Archaeology, Archaeobotany, the origins of agriculture, historical linguistics and archaeogenetics, and regional archaeology courses on Sudan and on Asia (South, East and Southeast Asia).  He does intensive practical teaching on seed identification for crops and major economic taxa from across Eurasiaand Africa. He currently co-ordinates the MSc in Environmental Archaeology.
Appointments
01-OCT-2012 Professor Institute of Archaeology University College London, United Kingdom
01-OCT-2009 – 30-SEP-2012 Reader in Archaeobotany Institute of Archaeology University College London, United Kingdom
01-JAN-2000 – 30-SEP-2009 Lecturer Institute of Archaeology University College London, United Kingdom
Academic Background
2000   Doctor of Philosophy University of Cambridge
1997   Master of Philosophy University of Cambridge
1995   Bachelor of Arts Yale University
Some IRIS profile information is sourced from HR data as explained in our FAQ. Please report any queries concerning HR data shown on this page to hr-services@ucl.ac.uk.
University College London - Gower Street - London - WC1E 6BT Tel:+44 (0)20 7679 2000

© UCL 1999–2011

Search by