Supervisors
Oliver Craig - University of York
Oliver directs the ChemArCh network and has over 20 years experience of organic residue analysis of archaeological artefacts. His research interests lie in temporal transitions and variability in human diets, cuisine and subsistence practices and the impact that dietary changes had on social evolution, health and the environment. He has worked on prehistoric artefacts from hunter-gatherer and early agricultural sites from South America, Europe to East Asia. twitter: @York_BioArCh, website
Jessica Hendy - University of York
Jessica's research focuses on developing and applying ancient protein analysis as a tool for understanding past dietary consumption practices and disease. In particular I focus on the potential of ancient proteins as dietary biomarkers, particularly in integration alongside other techniques in archaeological science, and hold research interests in the archaeology of fermentation and in the antiquity of dairying. twitter: @Jessie_Hendy, website
Nathan Wales - University of York
Nathan is interested in how humans domesticated crops and how those plants have been taken all over the world. To better understand those questions he examines ancient DNA from archaeological and historical specimens.
Aimée Little - University of York
Aimée is a specialist in prehistoric hunter-gatherer material culture. She is particularly interested in hunter-gatherer craft, art, cuisine, cooking technologies and funerary assemblages. Her primary area of expertise is microwear analysis and experimental archaeology, imaging techniques (laser scanning, SEM etc) and - through collaboration with colleagues - integration of biomolecular approaches (lipids, DNA etc) to the study of artefacts and materials such as adhesives, flaked and coarse stones, osseous tools and ornaments. Her research has a strong theoretical dimension, drawing on life history approaches. She is the Director of the York Experimental Archaeology Research Centre and PI on the AHRC-funded Stone Dead Project.
Xavier Terradas - Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)
Xavier's work has focused mainly on the study of socioeconomic strategies carried out by the last hunter-gatherer groups of the Mesolithic and the first Neolithic peasant communities in the western Mediterranean basin with a special focus on the lacustrine settlement of La Draga (Banyoles, Girona) and the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula. He specialises in the study of technological innovations and technical skills, especially those related to the production of lithic tools, and the availability of raw materials and the quarrying activities developed in their procurement. All this has been carried out within LITOcat’s project framework, based on the constitution of a siliceous rock collection for the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula. twitter: @asd_csic, website
Raquel Piqué Huerta - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Raquel's research activity has focused on the archaeology of hunter-gatherer and firsts farming societies, archeobotany, and ethnoarchaeology. She is particularly interested in how past societies managed the production and consumption of resources, with special attention to the production and consumption of plant foods, and goods and tools made of plants. She is also the co-director of the research project at the early Neolithic site of La Draga (Spain).
Matthew Collins - University of Copenhagen
Matthew's research interests center around the survival of ancient proteins, in particular the mechanisms by which proteins are degraded and the processes by which sequences survive. He is especially interested by the role played by mineral surfaces in protein survival, and in the use of multiple strategies to detect and understand processes of decay. Between 2003-2018 he led the BioArCh initiative at the University of York and he now splits his time between the University of Copenhagen and the University of Cambridge. twitter: @mc80york, website
Karina Krarup Sand - University of Copenhagen
Karina is an experimentalist with a geology and geochemistry background. Her research group works on in-situ molecular- to macro scale techniques to study bio-mineral interactions. Her main interest is the mechanisms and dynamics of the interfacial interplay between minerals, biomolecules and their environment. Currently her group works on making model systems to investigate preservation of proteins and DNA in sediments and artifacts using a range of microscopic and spectroscopic techniques. twitter: @KarinaKSand, website
Hannes Schroeder - University of Copenhagen
Hannes is a bioarchaeologist specialising in ancient genomics. He and his research group at the University of Copenhagen work primarily on questions relating to human population history and the changing landscape of infectious diseases. He is a Carlsberg Research Fellow and PI on the ERC Consolidator Project "AlpGen". twitter: @bitesizeDNA, website
Tobias Richter - University of Copenhagen
Tobias studies how, when, where and why human societies adopted plant cultivation and the herding of animals in the early human past and what the consequences of this process entailed. His primary research focuses on western Asia in the period between ca. 20,000 - 8,000 years ago. He also coordinates two major fieldwork projects investigating sites dating to this period in Jordan and Iran, and lead the Centre for the Study of Early Agricultural Societies at the University of Copenhagen. twitter: @TobiasR_archaeo, website
Frido Welker - University of Copenhagen
Frido is interested in studying human evolution over the last 1 million years via biomolecular analysis, in particular through the use of ancient protein analysis. At the University of Copenhagen, he and his team work to integrate such biomolecular datasets with genetic and archaeological approaches to come to a richer, more nuanced understanding of human behaviour, physiology, and phylogeny. As part of this, we have a particular interest in bone artefacts, and associated production strategies, of archaic hominins and modern humans. twitter: @FridoWelker, website
Andre Carlo Colonese - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Andre Colonese is Director of Research in the Department of Prehistory and the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). He is particularly interested in the emergence of food production and the role of coastal ecosystem services to early societies in South America and southern Europe. His research combines zooarchaeology, light stable isotopes (organic and inorganic) and organic residue analysis to derive ecological and economic information on past societies in these regions. More recently, he has been exploring the potential contributions of archaeology and history to biological conservation in biodiversity hotspots in tropical and subtropical South America. https://t.co/7DGaCvJXYG, website
Maria Sana - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Maria's research focuses on the study of the origins of the Neolithic and the domestication of animals, working in Southeast Asia, Mediterranean Europe and North Africa. With a particular interest in Archaeozoology, she directs her research towards the adaptation and integration of new analytical procedures based on biogeochemistry and bone biomechanics to the study of faunal remains in Archaeology.
Isabelle Théry-Parisot - CEPAM
Archaeobotanist, specializing in the study of charcoal from Paleolithic archaeological contexts. She has developed a socio-economic approach to anthracology, focusing on the management of fuel resources, thermal treatments, and the environment of Paleolithic societies. Her work relies in particular on the production of experimental data on fuel properties and the use of fire in material processing. More recently, she has conducted research on carbon isotopes as markers of climate change. She also develops AI approaches to aid in the identification of charcoal.. She has contributed to the study of around thirty archaeological sites in France, the Near East, and Africa.