Dr Emma Pomeroy

My research centres on understanding how past and present variation in human health, growth and morphology is influenced by evolutionary processes (e.g., adaptation, neutral variation, plasticity) and interactions with the natural and social environments. I combine human bioarchaeology with human biology and palaeoanthropology, and previous and current projects include work in South America, South Asia and Europe. In particular, my current work focuses on the behaviour and biology of Neanderthals from Shanidar Cave, Iraqi Kurdistan.

I gained my BA in Archaeology and Anthropology from Cambridge, and MA in Osteoarchaeology from the University of Southampton. Following employment in medical research and commercial archaeology, I completed my PhD in Biological Anthropology under the supervision of Dr Jay Stock (Cambridge) and Professor Jonathan Wells (UCL). My thesis investigated adaptation to varying social and natural environmental conditions in past and present Andean populations. 

Subsequently, I held a Junior Research Fellowship at Newnham College, Cambridge, and a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship at  Liverpool John Moores University, where I was also Lecturer in Biological Anthropology. 

Since 2016 I have also been the paleoanthropologist at renewed excavations at Shanidar Cave, Iraqi Kurdistan. Shanidar Cave is one of the most famous Neanderthal sites, yielding the remains of 10 men, women and children in excavations led by Ralph Solecki between 1951 and 1960. The new Shanidar Cave Project, led by Professor Graeme Barker, is using modern archaeological science and techniques to refine our understanding of the chronology and stratigraphy of Solecki’s original excavations, and to provide new insight into behaviour during the Palaeolithic. This has included the exciting discovery of significant new Neanderthal remains. 

My current research focuses onderstanding the taphonomy of the new remains, their contextual relationship to the remains discovered by Ralph Solecki, the morphology of the new individuals, their behaviour, and evidence for funerary activity. I also oversee the reconstruction and conservation of the skeletal remains with Dr Lucía López-Polín Dolhaberriague from the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social, Spain. I am also a collaborator on the DEATHREVOL project led by Dr Nohemi Sala, Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana, Spain.