Dr Jade Whitlam

Jade’s teaching aims to support students in becoming confident, independent learners, while challenging them to develop their ideas and engage critically with archaeological evidence. She values archaeology’s distinctive position at the intersection of the humanities, social and natural sciences, and encourages students to draw on different perspectives and approaches to understanding the past. Central to her approach is the idea of learning as a collaborative process, in which discussion, questioning and the exchange of ideas are encouraged.

She has experience of both classroom and online teaching and, as Director of Studies, contributes to the development and delivery of short online courses in Archaeology, Anthropology and Ancient History. She is currently leading the redevelopment of the Diploma and Advanced Diploma in British Archaeology, with a new Diploma in Archaeology and an Advanced Diploma in Archaeology due to launch in 2027. These new programmes will give students greater opportunities to develop their own interests and progress towards increasingly independent study.

Jade welcomes enquiries from prospective DPhil students interested in past relationships between people and environments, the archaeology of food and farming, and the broader archaeology of southwest Asia. She is also happy to discuss other projects that connect with her research interests and expertise.

Jade’s research explores how relationships between people, plants and environments have changed through time, with a longstanding interest in the archaeology of southwest Asia. Her interests extend across the archaeology of food and farming from traditional farming practices and plant management to the development and spread of agriculture and its longer-term consequences. These questions cut across regions and periods and connect with wider debates about how we manage environments and resources in the present day.

She is particularly interested in the emergence of farming in southwest Asia, both as a complex evolutionary process and as a major transformation in human history. Much of her work investigates how people managed plants during the early stages of the Neolithic; how crops became domesticated and evolved under human management; and how the establishment of farming transformed human societies, economies and environments.

Jade specialises in archaeobotany, analysing plant remains from archaeological sites to understand how people used and managed plants in the past. She has extensive experience working with archaeobotanical assemblages and combines this specialist expertise with ecological approaches and evolutionary theory. Her work uses methods including functional weed ecology and stable isotope analysis to investigate past plant management, growing conditions and the nature of early farming systems. This interdisciplinary approach was central to Farming Before Agriculture, her British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship project, which focused on archaeobotanical assemblages from the Early Neolithic sites of Sharara and el-Hemmeh in southern Jordan, and continues to inform her research. 

Fieldwork is also an integral part of Jade’s research and she has worked on a range of archaeological projects in Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Türkiye, Italy and Siberia, collaborating closely with excavation teams and leading environmental archaeology programmes on several international projects.

Alongside her academic research, Jade is committed to communicating archaeology to audiences beyond academia and to exploring how perspectives from the past can contribute to contemporary conversations. She has led a number of public engagement initiatives, including Farming: The First 12,000 Years, an exhibition and engagement project exploring the 12,000-year history of agriculture and its relevance to questions about food, farming and sustainability today. 

 Selected peer-reviewed articles 

• Whitlam, J., Flohr, P., Bogaard, A., Charles, M., Finlayson, B. and Makarewicz, C. 2026. Developmental plasticity under human management shaped cereal evolution prior to domestication in the Early Holocene southern Levant. PNAS, 123(82), e2535274123 

• Weide, A., Hodgson, J.G., Green, L., Whitlam, J., Douché, C., Dovrat, G., Osem, Y. and Bogaard, A., 2026. Disentangling plant management practices in Neolithic southwest Asia: a functional ecological perspective on habitat productivity and vegetation density. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 1–16. 

• Whitlam, J., Finlayson, B., Bogaard, A., Charles, M. and Makarewicz, C. 2023. Processing and storage of tree fruits, cereals and pulses at PPNA Sharara, southern Jordan. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 32, 501–516 

• Weide, A., Green, L., Hodgson, J.G., Douché, C., Tengberg, M., Whitlam, J., Dovrat, G., Osem, Y. and Bogaard, A. 2022. A new functional ecological model reveals the nature of early plant management in southwest Asia. Nature Plants 8, 623–634 

• Weide, A., Hodgson, J.G., Leschner, H., Dovrat, G., Whitlam, J., Manela, N., Melamed, Y., Osem, Y. and Bogaard, A., 2021. The association of arable weeds with modern wild cereal habitats: implications for reconstructing the origins of plant cultivation in the Levant. Environmental Archaeology, 28(4), 296–311. 

• Hommel, P., Kovaleva, O., Whitlam, J. et al. 2020. ‘Monumental Myopia’: bringing the later prehistoric settlements of southern Siberia into focus. Antiquity 94(373), e2. 

• Whitlam, J., Valipour, H.R. and Charles, M. 2019. Cutting the mustard: new insights into the plant economy of Late Neolithic Tepe Khaleseh (Iran). Iran, 58(2), 149–166. 

• Whitlam, J., Bogaard, A., Charles, M., Matthews, R., Matthews, W., Mohammadifar, Y. and Ilkhani, H. 2018. Pre-agricultural plant management in the uplands of the central Zagros: the archaeobotanical evidence from Sheikh-e Abad. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 27, 817–83.  

• Bogaard, A., Styring, A., Ater, M., Hmimsa, Y., Green, L., Stroud, E., Whitlam, J., Diffey, C., Nitsch, E., Charles, M. and Jones, G., 2018. From traditional farming in Morocco to early urban agroecology in northern Mesopotamia: combining present-day arable weed surveys and crop isotope analysis to reconstruct past agrosystems in (semi-) arid regions. Environmental Archaeology, 23(4), 303–322. 

Selected book chapters 

• Whitlam, J., Diffey, C., Bogaard, A. and Charles, M. 2020. The charred plant remains from Early Neolithic levels at Bestansur and Shimshara. In Matthews, R., Matthews, W., Richardson, A. and Rasheed Raheem, K. (eds). The Hilly Flanks Before Jarmo: Sedentism and Resource Management in the Neolithic of the Central Zagros of Iraq. CZAP Volume 2, 411–428 

• Bogaard, A., Styring, A., Whitlam, J., Fochesato, M. and Bowles, S. 2018. Farming, inequality and urbanization: a comparative analysis of late prehistoric northern Mesopotamia and south-west Germany. In Kohler, T. and Smith, M. (eds). Ten Thousand Years of Inequality: The Archaeology of Wealth Differences. University of Arizona Press, Amerind Seminar Series, Tucson, 201–229 

• Whitlam, J., Ilkhani, H., Bogaard, A. and Charles, M. 2013. The plant macrofossil evidence from Sheikh-e Abad: first impressions. The Earliest Neolithic of Iran, 175–184. 

 Edited special issues 

• Weide, A., Whitlam, J. and Jones, M. (eds). 2026. The Archaeology of Biodiversity, Archaeometry Special Issue 

• Whitlam, J. and Weide, A. (eds). 2023. Plant use and management during the emergence of farming in southwest Asia, Vegetation History and Archaeobotany Special Issue 

• Bendrey, R., Richardson, A., Elliott, S. and Whitlam, J. (eds). 2015. Environmental Archaeologies of Neolithisation: The Old World. Environmental Archaeology Special Issue, 20.3