photo: Roman Meier

As Director of the Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology, I focus my scientific work on the 1st century AD in Central, Northern and Eastern Europe. The interrelations between the Roman Empire and the Barbarian period are as much the focus of my interest as the development of social elites in Northern Europe. Another research focus is the archaeology of the Iron Age of former East Prussia. My activities in the field of science communication are closely linked to the UNESCO World Heritage sites Danewerk and Haithabu, with the large museums in Schleswig representing central mediation units.

Keywords: Archaeology of the 1st millennium AD in Central, Northern and Eastern Europe, science communication

photo: Kinka Tadsen © Stiftung Schleswig-Holsteinische Landesmuseen

I am an evolutionary biologist with interest in the origins and diversity of crops in historic Europe and their evolutionary histories. My work focuses on agricultural significant crops, such as Secale cereal, and their associated fungal pathogens from the Chalcolithic to the early modern period. Using modern molecular biology techniques as well as state of the art sequencing and computational methods, I am investigating samples of ancient DNA at the genomic level to learn more about how different factors, e.g., domestication and plant-pathogen interactions, influenced plant evolution.

Marta Dal Corso is a postdoctoral researcher in archaeobotany specialised in phytolith analysis and palynology. She explores plant uses and cultivation in the past and the relationships between human activities and natural environments. Her education at the University of Padua (Italy) was followed by her PhD on the environment in Bronze Age Northern Italy at the Graduate School ‘Human Development in Landscapes’, Kiel University (Germany). In Kiel, she has been employed as an assistant to the chair of Environmental Archaeology and worked as a researcher in the CRC 1266 on Copper Age Eastern Europe and on the spread of millet in Europe. In 2021, she coordinated the 12th International Meeting for Phytolith Research at Kiel University and collaborates with the DEI-Amman to investigate environmental changes at Tall Zira’a (Jordan). Finally, she has focused on routine activities within ROOTS and within her forthcoming job in the ERC GEODAP in Padova (Italy).

Keywords: Archaeobotany, palaeoecology, prehistoric archaeology, palynology, pollen analysis, bioarchaeology, experimental archaeology, environmental archaeology, Bronze Age, vegetation

The focus of my research is on human environmental interaction in the past. How did people use resources and how did they transform the environment into a cultural landscape? I am dealing with natural as well as cultural archives in the form of soils, sediments and peat deposits. I use pollen, non-pollen-palynomorphs, micro-charcoal, and chemical and physical features of the deposits to reconstruct environmental change with high time resolution and precise dating. The combination of on-site, near-site and off-site studies enables adifferentiation between local, regional and supra-regional processes.

My research focuses on past human-environment interactions in semi-arid and arid environments, specifically in Southwest Asia. My approaches have been broad, from studying the impact of climate change on early farming societies throughout SW Asia using radiocarbon dates, remote sensing and ground survey of smaller areas, to isotope studies of specific sites. In ROOTS, I am part of the Archaeological Stable Isotope Laboratory, where I focus both methodologically on what variables affect plant and animal isotopes and on applying stable isotope analysis to Neolithic archaeological samples from the Southern Levant to understand past environments, agricultural practices, pastoralism, and mobility. I also direct a survey project in the Karak region in Jordan.

In my research, I am particularly investigating and interested in social archaeological topics involving multiple proxies and empirical data. With an interdisciplinary approach, I conduct research on human-environment dynamics during the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, the emergence of social inequality, and demographic development during the Holocene. The main geographic focus of my research encompasses Central and Western Europe, primarily Central and Southern Germany.

Keywords: Social inequality, human-environment dynamics, demography, Neolithic, Bronze Age

My research project provides insights into questions about the transmission, gain and decline of technological knowledge of bifacial flint production in times of cultural and technological change. The focus lies on Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age Danish flint daggers and sickles. Recognition of technological fingerprints is aimed for by means of attribute analysis of production debitage by modern knappers. These attributes carry information about technical choices during the reduction sequence and thus provide valuable details on personal preferences and taught behaviours. Differences in the sequences enable conclusions about the transmission and development of technological knowledge.

Keywords: Lithic bifacial technology, experimental archaeology, attribute analysis, chaîneopératoire, knowledge transmission

photo: Michelle van Dijk 2018

My work is situated at the interface of archaeology and cultural anthropology and focusses on hunter-gatherer and pastoralist studies across North Eurasia. Research areas include the development and dispersal of Neolithic traits as seen from a hunter-gatherer perspective, Holocene hunter-gatherer socio-economic complexity in Europe and North Asia, contemporary hunter-fisher-herder lifeways in the Siberian taiga, and the roles and perception of Early Modern urbanism in nomadic Mongolia. My work brings together field-based archaeological research with ethnoarchaeological studies amongst contemporary hunter-fisher and herder communities in order to reach diversified, ontologically informed understandings of people and their material world.

My work involves the development of advanced methodology for the structural, functional and chemical analysis of archaeological materials within ROOTS. This involves a broad methodological spectrum and synergistic combinations of complementary analytical methods, including advanced X‐ray diffraction, spectroscopic methods and scanning as well as transmission electron microscopy. The materials for this investigation are available from different regions of Europe and time periods, including the southern Baltic Sea region between 2200 BC and AD 1300.

I am an archaeological methodologist exploring new methods and ways in the digital analysis of archaeological data focussing on spatial distribution and network analysis. The main sources for these analyses are sites, finds and different other archaeological objects which are investigated with the help of Geografic Information Systems (GIS) and statistical programming tools like Python and R. With more and more available digital data, this data science offers a new way of understanding the past. I think these methods can help us as archaeologists to uncover aspects of the (pre-)historic societies which were invisible beforehand and can be used to re-evaluate theories and concepts from a new perspective.

My research focuses on the relationship between humans and forests in the western Mediterranean over the long term. I study the wood heritage and old forest stands, both in the mountains and on the plains, in order to determine the history of human occupation, the circulation of wood between forests and urban sites, and the human impact on the environment. For this purpose, I use dendrochronology, history, archaeology and palaeo-environmental sciences in an interdisciplinary approach.

Keywords: Alps, dendrochronology, wood heritage, silvicultural practices, forests, chronology, trade, human impact

photo: Anthony Rety

Kiel University
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 12
24105 Kiel, Germany
 

My research focuses on the study of complex traits and metabolic adaptation using comparative genomics, molecular evolution and the development of bioinformatics approaches that integrate and analyse heterogeneous data. At Kiel, I am part of the Ancient DNA group and the “Dietary Roots” subgroup. Here, I analyse the dynamics of human genomic mutations and human-associated microbiome to better understand how environmental changes (especially diet), induced and experienced by our ancestors since the Neolithic, have shaped our modern gene pool and our susceptibility to certain metabolic diseases today. 

Keywords: Complex traits, metabolic adaptation, genomics, microbiome, bioinformatics

• Human-climate interaction, with special focus on the development during the last 10,000 years and with a regional focus on the Eastern Mediterranean and South America

• Palaeoenvironmental reconstruction as a basis for modeling future climate development

•  Environmental reconstruction based on sedimentary analyses, radiocarbon dating and faunal assemblages

• Carbon cycle and hydrological cycle, groundwater renewal