My research focuses on plant ecology with an integrated historical view on how past human development might have shaped species traits over time. I am investigating the Neolithic Plant Invasion Hypothesis, which connects current patterns of plant invasions with the history of agropastoral development in Eurasia during the Neolithic. During my PhD, I plan to carry out several experiments involving plants from all the continents, so I do not have a particular geographical focus but rather aim at searching for a general pattern in plant performance.

Keywords: Agropastoralism, biological invasions, disturbance, Neolithic, plant ecology

Copyright:  Studio Photonord / Michael Stammwitz

My research focuses on the economic and social history of medieval small towns. In doing so, I examine both the role of the available writings and the various social formations in the economies of these small towns and their inhabitants. The most important sources for this are the intermingled town books of the towns. These are often the only surviving sources and offer a wide range of cases of voluntary jurisdiction. Through these entries, it is possible to examine both the perceptions of the town books themselves and of the townspeople among themselves. In a comparative approach, I evaluate the use of these books in Upper Lusatia, Lower Lusatia and other Central and Western German regions.

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

My work focuses on sociolinguistics, historical linguistics and language contact for Slavic languages, mostly Russian. Within my PhD project, I trace the dispersal and internal diversity of the Russian language using quantitative methods to provide a quantitative classification of Russian dialects. This consists in further interdisciplinary research on ecological and sociological factors that influence the dynamic of language diversification and the formation of dialects – including language and cultural contact (also to neighbouring countries such as Finland, Belarus or Ukraine), migration, standardisation measures as well as transport of knowledge and information.
Keywords: Sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, language contact, dialectology, dialectometry

My research can be placed within medieval studies with a further specification on the social and economic history of the later Middle Ages. Drawing on a hermeneutic approach, I mainly work with administrative sources of ecclesiastical institutions (i.e. cathedrals) applying quantitative as well as qualitative methods. The respective questions are concerned with a broad range of financial and social aspects of medieval cathedral building as well as the development and transmission of the different forms of knowledge involved in the process. The geographical focus of my work is southern England and northern France.

Keywords: Social and economic history, knowledge transmission, palaeography, England, France, urban history, ecclesiastical institutions, medieval studies

My work lies in the combination of Sociolinguistics and Historical linguistics. I work with languages of the Indian subcontinent, especially Indo-Aryan languages, with a focus on the social and historical aspects of language use. Associated with the subcluster of Inequality, I focus on questions of how social inequalities and hierarchies interact/affect (have interacted/affected) the languages in use and vice versa. Linguistic identity, multilingualism, power dynamics, migration, language management, politics and linguistic justice are some of the other details situated at the centre of my work.

Keywords: Linguistic inequality, identity, language variation and change, language contact, multilingualism

My research focuses on processes of conflict and conciliation in the first millennium BC in the south-western region of the Baltic Sea. I employ methods of computative, theoretical and general archaeology in order to answer questions of landscape archaeology, e.g., how are specific sites embedded into their physical and social surroundings? In particular, I am interested in different fortifications of the time as material reactions to perceived conflict potentials of the past.

My research in the Excellence Cluster ROOTS takes place at the intersection of economics and archaeology and focuses on the measurement of wealth inequality in pre-Christian Central Europe. In collaboration with colleagues from other disciplines, I apply statistical and economic tools to archaeological datasets to explore the origins of wealth inequality in human societies. In addition to ROOTS, I work as a PhD student in the research cluster ‘International Finance and Macroeconomics’ at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. My main fields of interest are economic history, infrastructure investments, and geopolitics.

Keywords: Measuring inequality, Central Europe, prehistory economics, statistics

Within my PhD project, I analyse the developmental and cultural history and influence of fortified landscapes in Scandinavia by means of selected examples. My primary research region is located in the western part of the Baltic Sea, which covers today’s states of Denmark, Germany and Sweden, in the time frame between the 17th and the 20th century. The primary empirical base of the project is dedicated to the former Danish fortress Christianspries / Friedrichsort, which is located on the western shore of the Kiel Fjord. Furthermore, the fortress is considered to be one of the most important post medieval heritage sights in Schleswig-Holstein.

Keywords: Historical archaeology, archaeology of conflicts and battlefields, landscape archaeology, fortifications, historical geography

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.

My work is situated between the fields of archaeology and anthropology, with a focus on social-, quantitative- and collaborative archaeology. My current project has a broad chronological and geographical scope, covering the last eight millennia of hunter-gatherer settlement on the West Siberian Plain. It places particular emphasis on the interdependence between different forms of inequality, conflict, and social and environmental assets. Dealing with forager fortifications and associated transformations of the natural and social landscape, I am especially concerned with the question how socio-environmental inequalities affect societies and what resilience strategies people develop to counteract them.

Keywords: Social archaeology, quantitative archaeology, collaborative archaeology, hunter-gatherer research, West Siberia, socio-environmental inequality, conflict, social resilience

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.

Photo Henry Skorna: Tine Pape for Cluster ROOTS, 2021

I am an archaeologist with interests in geo-, social-, and economic archaeology. In my doctoral thesis, I deal with the development of social inequality in the Carpathian Basin between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. The main sources of my work are cemeteries and occasional settlements. In addition to my doctoral thesis, I am concerned with questions of settlement and social development in the Neolithic of Northern Serbia, chronological issues at the transition of the Copper Age to the Bronze Age, and the development of quantitative approaches to economic archaeology. The geographical and chronological focus of my work is in Eastern and Southeastern Europe (Balkans) between the Early Neolithic and the Middle Bronze Age.

Keywords: Economic archaeology, social archaeology, inequality, quantitative methods, Balkans, Neolithic, Bronze Age

Morgan’s research investigates reindeer domestication and human-reindeer relationships in the Circumpolar North. Through partnership with local Indigenous communities in the northern taiga of West Siberia, her work is grounded in a combined theoretical framework incorporating Traditional Ecological Knowledge with aspects of Niche-Construction, multispecies and Natureculture theory. Utilising ethnography, geometric morphometrics, and stable isotopes, her project seeks to create high-resolution biographies of modern reindeer to identify differences between wild and herded populations with an aim to better understand domestication processes while broadening parameters for situating human-reindeer systems in arctic and subarctic archaeological contexts.

Keywords: Multispecies, reindeer domestication, morphology, isotopes