Displaying 178 projects
At the intersection among the arts, science, and technology, printing is widely recognised as the invention of the millennium. However, and in spite of a resurgence of traditional typographic methods among artists and craftspeople, letterpress equipment and technology face an uncertain future...
Digital Humanities Research Project and Interactive Digital Rock-Art Gallery.
The ways Neanderthals treated their dead have been a key focus of long-standing debates about their capacities for compassion and symbolic thought, and their similarity to modern humans. These questions feed into broader questions concerning how similar Neanderthals were to ourselves, modern humans...
ERC Funded research project on human adaptability and the origins of human diversity.
The project AGRINA - Human transitional pathways towards food production in North Africa: Technological and environmental signatures.
The above photo shows: A left lateral aspect of a cranium from Catignano (a Middle Neolithic village in Abruzzo), showing two healing trepanations on the left parietal bone and healed fracture on the left frontal and parietal bones of a 40-50 year old female How did politics and inequality work in...
Analysis and evaluation of bronze axe hoards during the Late Bronze Age - Iron Age transition. The project investigates provenance, chronology, technological and cultural aspects of bronze deposition of the European Atlantic region.
Image: Pastoralist rock art, Serengeti, Tanzania. Photo: P. Lane. The Adaptation and Resilience to Climate Change (ARCC) project focuses on documenting the parameters leading to socio-ecological resilience in the borderlands area of Kenya and Tanzania, with specific reference to the Serengeti Basin...
A multi-disciplinary research project focusing on St. John's Hospital cemetery, Cambridge, with an aim to learn more about the lives of the medieval urban poor during the bubonic plague epidemic known as the Black Death.
Investigating the changing social landscape of the southern Danish island of Als from the Neolithic to the Viking period.
Focusing on cultural heritage, the project is exploring awareness of the archaeology of the ancient Egyptian city of Tell el - Amarna alongside local relationships with the site.
Anthropogenic Wetlands and the Long Transition to Agriculture in the Levant (Anthropogenic Wetlands)
The project will develop an innovative new model to examine the pivotal role of anthropogenic wetlands in the long transition to agriculture in the Levant. Remarkably, while this transition has been explored in some detail, we still do not have a good grasp on the long-term developments and causes...
Archaeological data is often biased and incomplete. This is a well-known issue for most archaeologists. Although studies of specific sites and small regions can have this into account, the effect of this problem increases exponentially as archaeologists expand their chronological and geographic...
The archaeology of Sub-Saharan Africa is rapidly gaining momentum, thanks to renewed efforts to decolonise and empower indigenous narratives of agency and creativity that have been bolstered further by the increasing application of scientific methods. However, important challenges remain. One is...
This project aims to study the crucibles and finished metal objects recently recovered from the Great Zimbabwe World Heritage site, using techniques from earth and materials sciences.
A cross-disciplinary series of international symposia, lectures, and publications, funded under the British Academy's UK-Latin American and Caribbean Link Programme.
Archaeometallurgical contributions to various research areas such as the provenance of Shang bronzes, ingenious adaptations of metallurgical technologies to different ecological and socioeconomic constraints, and regional developments of metallurgical traditions.
The metalwork of Pre-Columbian America has long fascinated scholars and the public alike. In addition to the sheer allure of gold, this attraction is exacerbated by the extraordinary technical skill that underpins many of these artefacts, as well as their mesmerising iconography, which evokes a...
The bioarchaeological characterization of disabled individuals from the past is particularly challenging because it pushes the boundaries of the interpretation of pathologies recognisable on human remains. With my project, namely B-CARED, I will investigate the bioarchaeological approaches for...
This project looks at public attitudes and engagements with newly built chambered tombs which seek to replicate a prehistoric form for the internment of modern cremations.
The aim of the ERC project Beasts to Craft (B2C) is to document the biological and craft records in parchment in order to reveal the entangled histories of improvement and parchment production in Europe from 500-1900 AD.
The 10th-5th centuries BCE (the first centuries of the Iron Age) witnessed significant societal transformations across the Mediterranean. Populations grew in many regions, the first genuine economic integration of the basin occurred through maritime interaction and overseas settlement, and, for the...
‘BODIES MATTER’ focuses on the material culture of bodies (and the self) in colonial borderlands by comparing three frontiers at various periods and geographies: the Spanish Empire’s southern borderland in the Americas in the AD 16th-19th century, the Punic western Mediterranean in the 6th-2nd...
Excavation and survey in southern Aspromonte.
A multidisciplinary project investigating the interrelations between crop plants, insect pollinators, and human management in prehistory.
Excavations of a Prehistoric and Roman landscape at Bury Farm, Stapleford, Cambridgeshire.
Cultural Heritage of Dictatorship in Albania.
Co-production Networks for Community Heritage in Tanzania.
Introduction to the CRIC Project.
Clay analysis of storage jars in the eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age, with the aim of establsihing links between commodities and their transport.
Archaeological investigation of the history of Cape Verde.
Coastal Origins: Earliest human occupation of the shoreline
The Community Heritage and Education for Sustainable Development in Tanzania project is a continuation of some of the activities initiated by the AHRC-funded Co-production Networks for Community Heritage in Tanzania (CONCH) project ( https://www.conchproject.org/ ), that ran in 2018 and 2019. This...
This project, funded by the McDonald Institute and the Society of Antiquaries, aims to survey of a WWI POW camp in Jersey in collaboration with the University of Liverpool and Bristol.
This research employs archaeobotanical and biomolecular methods to reconstruct ancient agropastoral change over the first millennium CE in two microregions, the Aravah valley along the southern border of modern Israel-Jordan and the adjacent Negev Highlands. The region witnessed unprecedented...
Excavation in the cemetery area of the ancient Latin town of Crustumerium, Rome.
Digital Artefacts: How People Perceive Tangible Cultural Heritage through Different Media.
Excavations at the Prehistoric site of Damerham, Hampshire.
Divergent Meanings: understanding the postmortem fate of human bodies found in Neolithic settlements from the Balkan area in light of interdisciplinary data.
This project is documenting the knowledge, skills, and practices of traditional dry-stone masonry at Great Zimbabwe, southern Zimbabwe. Once the capital of an Iron Age empire, Great Zimbabwe is an ancient settlement complex with dry-stone structures covering over 720 hectares. Around it, local...
EHSCAN is a Horizon-MSCA-2022-PF scheme Fellowship Funded by UKRI and hosted by the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. The aim is to understand the cultural dynamics and transmission means of material culture in North Africa during the Early Holocene period (~...
ENCOUNTER investigates the Jomon-Yayoi transition, a demic and cultural diffusion event that led the predominantly hunting, gathering, and fishing-based communities of the Japanese islands to adopt rice and millet farming during the 1st millennium BC.
Research into global connections, which formed the basis for the spread of objects, ideas, innovations, religions and empires, continues to fundamentally shape our understanding of the development of contemporary society. While the historiography of global connections is dominated by a European...
Investigating residential mobility in the eastern Mediterranean using isotope GeoChemistry’ (EPOCH GeoChem).
Tracking the early emergence of derived Homo -like cerebral features in the hominin fossil record can be expected to contribute to an understanding of the timing (i.e., chronology) and mode (i.e., process) of critical brain changes. Because brain tissue is not preserved in the fossil record...
The project will research how archaeological and palaeoecological narratives of past land management and climate change adaptation can shape sustainable farming, regenerative agriculture, and rewilding strategies in the Cambridgeshire Fenlands. The nationally important agricultural area is...
Investigating the socio-cultural and environmental impacts of colonialism.
Now represented by only two living genera restricted to tropical forests, sloths once were a dominant group within South American ecosystems until as recently as 10 ka, right before the last ice age extinction. Fossil sloths are considered plant eaters, like their modern relatives, but their...
Evolutionary psychiatry explores why humans are vulnerable to common, heritable mental disorders without clear pathology, considering factors like environmental impacts and misinterpreted adaptations. While it offers explanations, it doesn't provide evidence for reducing harm or developing new...
During the Early and Middle Bronze Age (2500-1600 B.C), a range of exchange networks linked Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Bahrain and South Asia, facilitating the long-distance movement of a wide variety of raw materials and finished products. Texts from the Sargonic and Ur III period (2300-2000 BC) provide...
Our knowledge of human evolution is limited by several factors. One is tightly linked to the nature of the fossil record, as bones of our extinct human relatives and other primate species rarely appear in archaeological and paleontological sites, and when they do, they very commonly appear in an...
This archaeology-led initiative focuses on the East Anglian Fens, an extraordinary landscape where exceptional preservation of organic artefacts and environmental evidence gives unparalleled insights into the last 5,000 years of communities, resources and habitats. The Fens are the richest and most...
Food globalisation in prehistory (FOGLIP) project employs archaeobotany, genetics, stable isotope analyses and ethno-archaeology to establish when and how early globalisation of staple foodstuffs occurred.
Study of the sustainability and subsequent radical change amongst the Maltese Temple Building populations of prehistoric Malta in the 4th and 3rd millennia BC.
Farmers at the Shoreline is a British Academy-funded project to survey and excavate coastal shell midden sites associated with the earliest black farming communities in South Africa. The project will locate cryptic archaeological sites in iSimangaliso Wetland Park in KwaZulu-Natal, one of the few...
Studying the diversity of political frontiers in Etruria.
Geoarchaeological research on Bantu landscapes is being carried out as part of the interdisciplinary Bantu Mobility Project. This project is exploring Bantu expansions in the Kafue floodplain of central Zambia. By combining archaeological survey and excavation, spatial analysis, historical...
A Diachronic Analysis of Four Scholarly Libraries.
This project takes as its focus the 1937 aerial bombardment of Gernika as a political and artistic event rooted in—and in ongoing dialogue with—colonial violence in the Middle East & North Africa. It connects the 1920s aerial bombardment of civilians in colonial Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and...
My project for the McDonald Institute investigates the interplay of institutional authorities, private citizens, localities, and global networks in the Late Bronze Age (ca. 16th-12th centuries BC), the first phase of globalization in world history. Globalization is not only an issue of...
The Cyrenaica prehistory project, Libya.
The last decades have witnessed marked achievements of STEM in understanding the remains of humans, animals, and plants from the past by analyzing different materials, both inorganic and organic. These developments have opened-up the great potential for increasing our understanding of cultural...
HEAAT aims to develop a multidisciplinary, theory-focused and data-driven research framework and agenda for East African historical archaeology that will privilege the research of the internal dynamics of African communities and account for the region’s history of complex identities. By...
This project regards the application and development of novel techniques of landscape archaeology in central Tyrrhenian, Italy.
Untangling the histories and philosophies of archaeology and making them intelligible.
Long-distance exchange networks played key roles in the socio-political history of Central Africa before the 20th century, but they are poorly known prior to the 19th century owing to a scarcity of written sources covering the earlier centuries. Archaeological data, however, suggest that major 19th...
How did our ancestors walk? Perhaps the greatest challenge that this question has posed in the past, is the lack of methodological applications in which no study has previously reconstructed how our ancestors moved using biomechanical modelling techniques. We need to consider not just individual...
A large-scale multi-disciplinary study of pre-Roman iron technology in the Iberian Peninsula.
In Africa is a five-year research programme to investigate the origins of our species - Homo sapiens - and its diversity in Africa, and aims at making new discoveries of early human fossils, archaeological sites and their environmental context.
Despite recent progress in molecular analyses and the constant increase of the hominin remains in the fossil record, the chronological, geographical and evolutionary context of the emergence of the genus Homo remains largely debated. More importantly, the identity of our direct ancestors and...
The aim of H-E Interactions is to investigate how increasingly anthropogenic wetland landscapes, and the reliable resources within those environments, influenced the evolution of plant-food production and the origins of agriculture through the Final Pleistocene and into the Early Holocene (ca. 23-8...
Northern Bosnia is a key location in which to investigate human-environment interactions in the Late Pleistocene /Middle-Upper Palaeolithic. Our research aims to evaluate hominan resource networks and investigate palaeoenvironmental conditions during this period, and address the following...
Investigating ancient Pushkalavati: Excavations at Balar Hisar, Charsadda, North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan.
The Kani Shaie Archaeological Project is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge, the University of Coimbra (Portugal), and the Sulaymaniyah Directorate of Antiquities. Since 2013, the project organises excavations at the site of Kani Shaie near the town of Bazyan in Sulaymaniyah...
Excavations at the settlement adjoining the prehistoric sanctuary on Keros in the Cycladic Islands of Greece, the earliest maritime sanctuary in the world (2750-2240BC).
A rescue excavation of Kilise Tepe in the valley of the River Göksu, providing insight into the history of the Hittite, Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires.
A new archaeological project at the ancient city of Lagash in south Iraq (modern Tell al-Hiba) began in March-April of 2019. LAP is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge, University of Pennsylvania (USA) and Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage.
The excavation of a WWII forced labour camp in order to explore the daily life of internment under German occupation.
Environmental constraints and human responses in northwest India between 2000 and 300 BC: Investigating the cultural and geographical transformations from the collapse of Harappan urbanism to the rise the great Early Historic cities.
Children experiencing food insecurity, repeated infections and psychosocial stress have compromised development, and increased risk for non-communicable diseases in adulthood. While public health interventions have had limited benefits, addressing this is critical, both from a public health...
This website provides a platform for learning about the Egyptian archaeological site of Amarna, known anciently as Akhetaten with a focus on educational resources for children and schools around the world on life at Amarna in the past and present.
Investigating the Iron Age landscape of the island of Lismore.
Taking as its starting point the radically new perspective offered by recent archaeological discoveries at Rendlesham in SE Suffolk, and with the East Anglian kingdom as the primary case study, this interdisciplinary project (running 2017-2020) aims to establish a new understanding of pathways to...
As the world's remaining hunting and gathering societies interact more actively with their settled agricultural neighbours, they face major changes in their diet, mobility and community networks. The 5-year MOBILE project is studying the impact of these changes on the health and biological...
A project investigating the Mamasani district in the highlands of Fars in southwest Iran.
Image: Ancient pastoralist settlement viewed from the air, Amboseli, Kenya. Photo: P. Lane. Mapping Africa's – Endangered Archaeological Sites and Monuments (maeasam.org) project aims to identify and document endangered archaeological heritage sites across Africa using a combination of remote...
The Mapping Archaeological Heritage in South Asia (MAHSA) project will document the endangered archaeology and cultural heritage of the Indus River Basin and the surrounding areas and publish this information in an Open Access Arches geospatial database. This database will be a collaborative output...
The Marakwet Heritage Project is a community-based collaboration which involves a multidisciplinary investigation into Marakwet history, heritage, landscape and farming.
MedAfrica Project - Archaeological deep history and dynamics of Mediterranean Africa, ca.9600-700 BC
This project sets out to produce a comprehensive, problematised synthesis and interpretation of long-term social and economic dynamics along Mediterranean Africa during the Holocene (9600-700 BC).
This project analyses early Near Eastern materials and inscriptions holistically in the study of the commemoration of the individual from the Early Dynastic period through the first millennium BCE.
Analysis of the faience from excavations of the kiln at Kom Helul, Memphis.
MendTheGap - Smart Integration of Genetics with Sciences of the Past in Croatia.
The project focuses on the models of circulation of raw materials during the Iberian Late Prehistory, as well as the use and social value given to the different materials, with special attention to metals and amber.
Excavation at the magnificently-decorated Minaret of Jam, Afghanistan.
This project aims to gain a better understanding of the relationship of Crete with the world outside the island through the lens of a key body of materials: goldwork.
The project centres on the development and application of quantitative methods that model the emergence and extinction of technological diversity. This research builds from the premise that technological innovations can be a key mechanism for mitigating unpredictable or rapidly changing...
The analysis of a fuzzy frontier between the Etruscans and the Umbrians.
The Must Farm project is the first landscape scale archaeological investigation of deep Fenland, with its complex geological history.
The Northeast Algonquin Palaeo-Lake and Environmental Assessment (NAPLEA).
A project investigating Modern human dispersal into Eurasia and its relation to Neanderthal extinction during the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition.
Our understanding of the origins of our species, Homo sapiens, has undergone a major shift. New fossils, dates and genomic studies have consolidated our African origin. Yet, they also indicate a deeper past, involving multiple events. These events stretch to nearly three quarters of a million years...
The project seeks to examine the economic and social relationships of ancient Egyptian tomb owners. Drawing upon both textual and archaeological sources, in particular the interplay between them, the project will analyse new quantifiable economic data from private rock-cut tombs during the New...
Excavations and survey work at the ancient town of Nepi carried out during the early 1990s under the umbrella of the Tiber valley project of the British School at Rome .
This project integrates maritime archaeology, history, geophysical survey and anthropology to investigate illicit trade between the Caribbean islands St. Eustatius, Saba, St. Thomas, St. Bartholomew and St. Maarten from 1816 to c.1840 with the aim of understanding: -The entanglements between...
Quantitative meta-analysis of f ish bones recovered from archaeological excavations with the aim of tracing human use of marine resources over the last 2000 years.
The project tracks the flux in rich cultural florescence and collapse through the past along the course of the Peruvian Río Ica from the southern Andes to the coast.
The aim of PLOMAT, an innovative project on commonplace cylinder seals of Late Bronze Age Western Eurasia, is to offer new perspectives on the study of non-élite populations and the small-scale networks that operated at a time of art internationalization in the ancient world. PLOMAT will map the...
The PROCON project explores the role of textile production and consumption in the formation of early states, using the example of Mediterranean Europe during 1000-500 BCE.
Human evolution is a central research area in biology and anthropology and has a history of research going back more than 150 years. For most of that time, evidence has come from digging up fossils and archaeological remains. Research in human evolution has been transformed by the impact of...
How did the biomechanics and ergonomics of the human hand influence the use and production of Palaeolithic stone tools? Traditionally, stone tools have been analyzed for their morphological properties and technological characteristics to infer the cognitive and social evolution of early hominins...
During the medieval and renaissance periods, the Low Countries were a key region for trade, international finance, and the arts. Cities such as Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, Amsterdam and Leiden developed large populations, and with high population comes the problems of sanitation. Medieval populations...
The aim of this project is to better understand the health consequences of parasitism in the Roman world. The Romans were responsible for introducing sanitation and hygiene infrastructure to those parts their empire where it did not exist before. Communal latrines for town inhabitants, individual...
This project is a response to calls to build long-term sustainability and resilience into pastoral social-ecological systems in sub-Saharan Africa through provision of deep histories of human-environment interactions. It focuses on collecting and analysing archaeological and related data on the...
An educational, oral-history research initiative.
The aim of this project will be to investigate the nature and impact of Roman imperialism on the frontiers of North Africa (specifically the Maghreb), especially in considering the role of Roman imperialism on the political economy of the region and its impact on both pre-existing communities and...
The aim of this project will be to investigate the nature and impact of Roman imperialism on the frontiers of North Africa, especially in considering the role of Roman imperialism on the political economy of the region and its impact on both pre-existing communities and the formation of new...
Despite a long history of intensive landscape-oriented archaeological research in the Aegean, most primary fieldwork has been concentrated in mainland Greece and a few Aegean islands. By contrast, the eastern side of the Aegean has received far less attention, with local methods and research...
Caractérisation du comportement et adaptation des Néandertals et les hommes modernes pendant la transition entre le Paléolithique moyen et supérieur.
The Promised project forms a network of excellence in Bioarchaeology and Archaeological Materials Science within the Science and Technology in Archaeology and Culture Research Center (STARC) at the Cyprus Institute linked with the advanced research centres in Archaeological Science at KU Leuven and the University of Cambridge.
Caracterización del comportamiento y adaptación de los neandertales y humanos modernos durante la transición entre el Paleolítico medio y superior.
Changing Paleoenvironments and Hunter-Gatherer Strategies in the Northern Adriatic Basin.
In the last decade we have learned that (at least) three human species existed across the African continent during the Pleistocene. After the paleoanthropological and archaeological discoveries and dating of Jebel Irhoud (Morocco), we know that Homo sapiens was present at around 300ka with a clear...
Quoygrew is a late Viking Age and medieval rural settlement on the island of Westray in Orkney, Scotland.
Cooperation is a markedly human mix of innate and learned behaviour, and a key to tackling some of our greatest concerns. Paradoxically, studies of social dynamics often focus on hierarchies, state formation and political structures ruled by coercive power, with comparatively little regard to the...
As part of the international campaign to salvage sites threatened by construction of the second Aswan High Dam in southern Egypt, coordinated by UNESCO, researchers from Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland collaborated on a series of archaeological campaigns between 1960 and 1964. Known as the...
Fordwich has been revealed to be the oldest directly-dated Acheulean occurrence in the United Kingdom, with artefacts dating from 560,000 to 620,000 years ago (MIS 15). This makes it the second oldest Acheulean site in north-west Europe, and the oldest to display a known handaxe assemblage...
This project seeks to develop a theoretical and practical understanding of the relationship between reparations, responsibility and victimhood in transitional societies.
The Rising from the Depths Network aims to identify ways in which the marine and maritime cultural heritage of Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and Madagascar can be used to benefit coastal communities in these countries. Many of these communities are among the poorest in the region and are especially...
Recording, analysing and interpreting the art of prehistoric fisher-gatherer-hunters in Southeastern Scandinavia.
A study of the Roman pottery of the Nepi Survey Project in 2007.
Investigating indications of the early occurrence and development of aspects of religious practices and belief.
SCATTER investigates the multivocal notion of territory in Protohistory through the study of settlement patterns in ecological settings. Specifically, SCATTER focus on the Central Anatolian region during the Middle and Late Bronze Age, i.e. the second millennium B.C. The goal is to acquire better...
SILKGLASS is a Horizon Europe MSCA-PF fellowship funded by UKRI and hosted by the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. Central Asia is traditionally seen as a passive Silk Roads throughway rather than an active and creative node. SILKGLASS seeks to investigate...
This five-year project funded by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance seeks to write European heritage guidelines for Holocaust and Roma genocide sites in order to safeguard them for the future.
The project Science @ Tarquinia aims to provide the complementary scientific support for the long-standing study of the ancient Etruscan city of Tarquinia by the University of Milan. This Unesco World Heritage site is well known for its magnificent painted tombs, its city walls, the Temple of Ara...
Shanidar cave viewed from the south (Photograph: Graeme Barker) The Shanidar Cave Project Following an invitation to Professor Graeme Barker from the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq, the Shanidar Cave Project was established as a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and the...
Investigating the development of historic environments along the longest river drainage system in Japan.
Igbo-Ukwu is a famous archaeological site in southeastern Nigeria. Excavated by Professor Thurstan Shaw in the 1960s, the site was settled over a thousand years ago. The materials from the site were unlike anything yet found in West Africa at the time. This discovery brought to our consciousness...
A series of inter-related projects are enhancing knowledge of the South (east) Etruria area north of Rome.
A first millennium AD city in the central plains of Myanmar.
Star Carr and the early postglacial occupation of the Vale of Pickering, North Yorkshire.
A Bronze Age fortified tell settlement on the right bank of the river Danube 30km south of Budapest.
Water availability, management and use are crucial factors when it comes to maintaining modern populations in the arid and semi-arid environments that dominate much of India. Today, large parts of India are intensively farmed, and the large-scale mono-cropping of water intensive crops like winter (...
The investigation of urban growth and administration in northern Mesopotamia in the 4th and 3rd millennia BC (north-east Syria).
Excavations at the Brough of Deerness, an enigmatic Viking Age site in Orkney.
Understanding power relations and social practice in the Calchaqui Valley, Argentina during the period before the Inka conquest (AD 1000-1450).
Cambridge is home to world-leading researchers across archaeological science, technical art history and heritage science, based at Department of Archaeology, the Fitzwilliam Museum, and the Hamilton Kerr Institute, among others. There are multiple synergies across these institutions in terms of...
Identifying and investigating sites of probable Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman, and Saxon date in the hinterland of Canterbury.
Agriculture in Africa faces multiple challenges. Climate extremes, ecosystem degradation and population growth continually prompt calls for the urgent transformation of food systems. Mainstream attempts remain focused on modernising paradigms in ways that overlook historic and contemporary...
Investigating long-term and present-day interactions between people and rainforest in the Kelabit Highlands of central Borneo.
What does a river do? As anyone who has lived by one knows, rivers structure human worlds in many ways. This project explores the role of Europe’s greatest river in the formation of new societies, in and after the last centuries of the Roman Empire in the West (150–700 AD). The Danube occupied a...
What was understood to be ‘good government’ in the Ancient Near East? While the notion of a ‘constitution’ – a key mechanism for setting out how to govern – is typically associated with relatively modern societies, this project sets out to explore the core ideas behind state power, the rule of law...
Researching how and where broomcorn millet was first domesticated and why it appears on opposite sides of Asia at a similar time, 8,000 years ago.
This is a pilot project aimed at developing an interdisciplinary approach to research on the legacies of enslavement and emancipation in Senegal, West Africa. The project is situated within the context of renewed archaeological engagements with local communities and paralell changes in...
Ancient Settlements of the Gangetic Plain: Location and Territoriality.
Investigating unsolved problems of the fourth and third millennium BC in Malta.
Bioarchaeological analysis of early cold-climate human ecology.
The project aims to contribute to the understanding of weaving by focusing on the identification of plants used for the earliest textiles (ca 28,000 to 20,000 years ago).
Investigating human-animal relations in the ancient Near East, with equids (horses, donkeys and horse-donkey hybrids) as the main focus.
Excavation at Hang Boi, the Fortune-Teller's Cave, Vietnam.
This project will challenge the extant model on the beginning and spread of Islamic glazes, which asserts that they were all derived from the Middle East and spread with Arab expansion, and that new technologies were adopted passively by conquered societies. It will include a variety of glazed ware types dating to the 9th to 13th centuries CE from different regions of Central Asia.
Traumatic death affects our daily life, but how did traumatic mortality affect human behaviour from an evolutionary perspective? TRAUMOBITA aims to understand how traumatic mortality among prehistoric humans shaped our behaviour during the Late Pleistocene to the Middle Holocene. Confirming that...
Collapse and transformation in the Mediterranean 1200-500 BC.
Mapping the lower and middle Tiber catchment: Archaeological site recovery, erosion, water management (artificial channels), land use, DEM precision, and demographic reconstruction.
The PlaCe network is a high-profile partnership focused on the interdisciplinary study of pre-modern ceramics and plasters. This Innovative Training Network aims at training Early-Stage Researchers to conduct state-of-the-art, science-based research on the technology, use, and provenance of...
The transition from Oldowan to Acheulean technologies are hypothesised to be concomitant with advances in cognition and behaviour. However, the nature of these shifts, and their cultural and evolutionary implications are poorly defined and understood. While extensive literature exists on these...
An international and interdisciplinary investigation of the interplay and dynamics of winter and summer rainfall systems and human adaptation to the ecological conditions created by those systems.
This project is examining resource landscapes and urban transition on Zanzibar during two major periods of urban growth. Fieldwork at Unguja Ukuu (7th–15th centuries) and Tumbatu (11th–15th centuries) on Zanzibar is exploring domestic contexts and investigating resource uses supporting the...
Excavations at the cave site of Vela Spila, island of Korčula, Croatia.
Visual Perception and Cognition in the Rock Carvings of Northern Russia.
This project brings together several research streams to examine the nexus relations between land and water resources, societal development, and landscape stability in sub-Saharan Africa. What processes and practices support long-term settlement and resource use? How did past societies secure water...
This is a collaborative research project between archaeologists and pastoralist community organisations on the long-term history of indigenous water management and well digging in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia. In these arid and semi-arid parts of eastern Africa, wells form a key component...
As the complex mosaic of Quaternary human lineages across and beyond Africa becomes increasingly apparent, an accurate chronology is critical to disentangle the patterns and process, particularly those that link human evolution to palaeoenvironmental and climatic change. “Wisdom Teeth” is a NERC-...
This project analyzes the historiography of the Yangshao Culture and its functioning as a heritage icon for the Chinese nation as well as its impact on various societal concerns.
Investigating and documenting the remains of the lower town at Ziyaret Tepe in southeasten Turkey
The Assyrian Empire was the first multinational empire in the ancient near east. By the seventh century BC it had grown to cover all of Iraq, Syria and the Levant, substantial portions of western Iran and south-eastern Turkey and even, for brief periods, Egypt. In the site of Ziyaret Tepe we have...
This project aims to improve the poor integration of localized data linking various WASH dimensions (infrastructure, access, practices) and children nutritional status at the population level as well as the poor involvement of policy makers concerned with WASH in local and country level nutritional...
Характеристика поведения и адаптации неандертальцев и современных людей к условиям МИС 3, включая условия перехода от среднего к верхнему палеолиту.