Patrick's research focusses on taphonomy and thanatology in forensic, archaeological and palaeontological contexts, with the aim of understanding mortuary behaviours, peri and post-mortem alteration to the body, and site formational processes. His work integrates decomposition modelling with multi-scalar approaches to how body deposition sites (whether intentional or natural) function and change through time - integrating bone taphonomy, sedimentology and geomorphology, biotic and abiotic factors to understand the persistence and transfer of taphonomic evidence through time.
He has research interests across the field of forensic taphonomy including human and animal decomposition processes, osseous taphonomy, differentiation of sub‐aerial and sub‐surface processes, trauma analysis, ichnotraces, and the application of digital methods in the analysis of spatial taphonomy and the decomposition process. In particular he is using innovative approaches using 3D and 4D space capture and modelling (from laser, structured light scanning and photogrammetry), and remote sensing and GIS, to understand site formational processes from object to landscape level. This includes research which aims to improve methods of environmental detection of buried deposits using multi-proxy and remote sensing data from drones and UAV.
He has an interest in the field of wildlife and environmental crime and the application of forensic methods to combat it.
He has also continued research into the human evolutionary process, working at the sites of Malapa and Rising Star in South Africa. His role in the Rising Star project has been to apply skillsets derived from forensic casework (having worked on homicides, fatal fires and mass graves from war crimes) to the deep past; using the skills from modern forensic taphonomy to understand the context, decompositional environment and mortuary behaviours of Homo naledi. His research also encompasses the effects of disease and trauma on the skeleton, and he recently led multi-disciplinary research teams investigating the earliest evidence for neoplastic disease (both tumours and cancers) in the hominin fossil record.
He is an experienced field worker and conducts fieldwork in Middle Pleistocene palaeo-archaeological deposits in the Limpopo region of South Africa, and is Co-Director of the Makapansgat Archaeological Landscape Project.
He is currently supervising a number of PhD projects looking at differing aspects of the forensic and palaeosciences.
Back to top
