Erlend Kirkeng Jørgensen is a researcher at the High North Department. He holds a doctoral degree in archaeology/human ecology from UiT – The Arctic University of Norway, 2020, with the dissertation “Maritime Human Ecodynamics of Stone Age Arctic Norway: developing middle-range casual linkages between climate forcing, demography and technological responses”.

Erlend is a “human ecodynamics” specialist and investigates the co-evolution of humans and ecosystems. He investigates how hunter-gatherers in the Circumpolar area developed maritime adaptive strategies as a response to climatic and ecological  drivers since the last Ice Age. This research contributes to baselines and longitudinal studies that are necessary to reconcile the effects of the current socioecological crisis with human adaptive abilities, by way of risk management, technological adaptation, and systemic change at societal scales – combined with the feedback mechanisms eventually affecting the environment.

Erlend has a strong inter-disciplinary profile directed at Holocene palaeoecology. His collaborators cover a wide range of disciplines, including biology, geology, statistics, climatology etc. Furthermore, he benefits from an extensive, international academic network extending across Europe and North America – established through various research stays abroad. He is, and has for the last 4 years, been associated with the «Stone Age Demographics» project at UiT, funded by the Research Council of Norway.

His ongoing research projects pursue the following issues: 1) Trophic interaction with coastal organisms as a driver of human demographic and technological features. 2) When, how and why did ceramic technology get re-introduced to Arctic Norway approx. 4000 years ago. 3) Identify the volcanic origin of pumice deposited on fossil beach ridges on the Norwegian coast, and track the ocean currents responsible for the transport through time. 4) Determine the ecological conditions responsible for the convergent evolution of maritime adaptive strategies among Circumpolar hunter-gatherers, with particular emphasis on ground slate technologies.