- B.A., Anthropology major, Indigenous Studies minor, June 2007, University of British Columbia Okanagan
- M.A., Archaeology, December 2010, University of Calgary
- Ph.D., Anthropology, August 2015, University of Texas at Austin
Previous Positions:
- Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada (SSHRC) Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto (2015-2017)
- Marie Curie Fellow (MSCA-EF), University of Cambridge (2017-2020)
Biography
As an environmental archaeologist, with an expertise in microbotanical methods, phytolith, starch grain and starch spherulite analysis, and microcharcoal, I am interested in how people used plants in the past. More broadly I study how people used, modified and ultimately constructed their environments and how this feedback impacts human experience and plant-use.
During my PhD I conducted phytolith analysis at several key Epipaleolithic (ca. 23-14.7 cal. BP) sites in the Levant (Israel and Jordan) to investigate hunter-gatherer plant-use throughout the climate fluctuations of the late Pleistocene.
This research led me to consider the critical role of reliable resources, particularly wetland resources, to hunter-gatherer life-ways, a topic I contined to investigate during a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) post-doc (University of Toronto), and a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (University of Cambridge).
Building on this, my current project – Anthropogenic Wetlands and the Long Transition to Agriculture in the Levant (funded by the Leverhulme Trust under a Early Career Fellowship) – employs a combination of microbotanical approaches, (phytolith, starch and microcharcoal analyses) and geoarchaeology, in particular micromorphology, to investigate how increasingly anthropogenic wetland landscapes and the reliable resources therein may have influenced the evolution of plant-food production and the origins of agriculture through the Final Pleistocene into the Early Holocene (ca. 23-8 ka cal. BP) in the Levant.
I have also developed a research focus on early plant food processing and foodways, in particular the application of starch spherulites to archaeological contexts. This new archaeobotanical proxy has the potential to allow us to identify a range of processing activities, including baking, brewing and boiling of starchy plant foods deep into the archaeological past.
Research
- Environmental Archaeology
- Paleoethnobotany
- Microbotanical Analysis (phytoliths, starch grains and starch spherulites, and microcharcoal)
- Residue Analysis
- Plant food processing and foodways
- Human Niche Construction
- Human-Environment Interactions
- Hunter-Gatherers
- Origins of Agriculture
Publications
Ramsey, M.N. and Dani Nadel. 2021, A new archaeobotanical proxy for plant food processing: Archaeological starch spherulites at the submerged 23,000 year-old site of Ohalo II. Journal of Archaeological Science. DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2021.105465
Arranz-Otaegui, A., L. Gonzalez Carretero, M.N. Ramsey, D.Q. Fuller and T. Richter. 2018, Archaeobotanical evidence reveals the origins of bread 14,400 years ago in northeastern Jordan, PNAS. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1801071115
Ramsey, M.N., A.M. Rosen, L. Maher, D. MacDonald and D. Nadel. 2018, Sheltered by the Reeds: Construction and use of a twenty thousand year old hut according to phytolith analysis from Kharaneh IV, Jordan. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 50:85-97. DOI: 10.1016/j.jaa.2018.03.003
Ramsey, M.N., A.M. Rosen and D. Nadel. 2017, Centered on the Wetlands: Integrating new phytolith evidence of plant-use from the 23,000-year-old site of Ohalo II, Israel. American Antiquity, 82(4):702-722. DOI: 10.1017/aaq.2017.37
Ramsey, M.N., A.M. Rosen, L. Maher and D. MacDonald. 2016, Risk, Reliability and Resilience: Phytolith evidence for alternative ‘Neolithization’ pathways at Kharaneh IV in the Azraq Basin, Jordan. PLOS ONE, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0164081
Ramsey, M.N. and A.M. Rosen. 2016, Wedded to Wetlands: Exploring Late Pleistocene Plant-Use in the Eastern Levant. Quaternary International, 396:5-19. DOI: 10.1016/j.quaint.2015.10.109
Ramsey, M.N., M. Jones, T. Richter and A.M. Rosen. 2015, Modifying the Marsh: A Preliminary Evaluation of Early Epipaleolithic Hunter-Gatherer Impacts in the Azraq Wetland. The Holocene, 25:1553-1564. DOI: 10.1177/0959683615594240
Laparidou, S., M.N. Ramsey and A.M. Rosen. 2015, Introduction to the Special Issue: ‘The Anthropocene in the Longue Durée’. The Holocene, DOI: 10.1177/0959683615594472
Crumley, C., S. Laparidou, M.N. Ramsey and A.M. Rosen. 2015, A view from the past and the future: concluding remarks on ‘The Anthropocene in the Longue Durée’. The Holocene, DOI: 10.1177/0959683615594473
Other Professional Activities
Cambridge Global Food Security, https://www.globalfood.cam.ac.uk/memberdirectory/dr-monica-nicolaides-ramsey-1
Churchill College, https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/people/view/monica-ramsey/