Congratulations to Patrick Roberts from the Department of Archaology for winning the Beutenberg-Campus Jena e.V's award for outstanding achievement by a young researcher. Patricks work has uncovered new insights into the relationship between humans and tropical forests in the past.
The first Homo sapiens fossil discovery from Saudi Arabia dates to 90,000 years ago during a time when the region’s deserts were replaced by grasslands.
The new field of palaeoproteomics, harnessing cutting-edge techniques to analyze ancient proteins, is growing quickly. Researchers set out standards and precautions that aim to provide it with a firm foundation.
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Prof. Petraglia’s talk at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge “Following in Bridget Allchin’s Footsteps: the Current State of Stone Age Archaeology” reflected on Dr. Allchin’s pioneering work and contributions to the field throughout her career.
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This month we will be highlighting female employees and their work, beginning with Director Nicole Boivin of the Department of Archaeology. Check back here throughout the month for updates!
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Speaker: Dr. María Martinón-Torres, Director, Centro National Research Center on Human Evolution (CENIEH), Burgos, Spain Date & Time: March 14, 2018, 15:30 Room: Villa V14 Hosts: Michael Petraglia and Nicole Boivin, Department of Archaeology
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The Max Planck Institutes for the Science of Human History, Biogeochemistry and Chemical Ecology invite applications for a Max Planck Research Group Leader (W2) position on the topic of extreme events in biological, societal and Earth systems.
Stable isotope research group of the MPI-SHH provides recommendations on terminology, methodology, data handling, and reporting when developing and reviewing stable isotope applications in archaeology.
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Dr. Yang, whose research areas include Paleolithic East Asia, lithic techniques and raw material sourcing, is a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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Technological advances and multidisciplinary research teams are reshaping our understanding of when and how humans left Africa – and who they met along the way.
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This workshop will bring together different specialists working in South Asia to share results and facilitate an inter-disciplinary approach to uncovering the past of this diverse region "crossroads". Date: Dec. 15, 9:00-18:00 Host: Department of Archaeology Organizer: Ayushi Nayak (nayak@shh.mpg.de)
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The MPI-SHH Adventures in Archaeology coloring book, debuted at the Long Night of Sciences, is now available for download in three languages - with more on the way! English German/Deutsch Spanish/Español
Researchers from the MPI-SHH have found what may be the oldest-known images of dogs, some of whom are wearing leashes. The original study, published in the Journal of Anthropolical Archaeology, is described in Science Magazine (with accompanying video).
Alicia Ventresca Miller is co-editor of this new edited volume, which brings together the latest studies using heavy and light stable isotopic analyses of humans and animals to investigate pastoralist diets, movement, and animal management strategies.
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The project, headed by Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, receives Dr. Abdul Rahman Al Ansari Award for Serving Kingdom’s Antiquities for a Pioneering Non-Saudi Group at the 1st Saudi Archeology Convention.
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Article in the Guardian by postdoctoral researcher William Taylor discusses the problems currently faced in Mongolia due looting of archaeological sites. Mongolia’s cold, dry climate can result in incredible archaeological finds, but a harsh economic downturn means looting has risen to disastrous levels.
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This workshop aims to explore the ways in which new and innovative multidisciplinary approaches can reveal how specific opportunities and obstacles shaped the spread of peoples, plants, and animals in Holocene eastern Africa.
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Genetic analyses uncover lost human populations and surprising relationships, revealing a complex history of population movements in ancient Africa.
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Max Planck Society Research Grant awarded to project led by Dr. Patrick Roberts to use tree DNA and chronological profiling to reconstruct prehistoric human rainforest disturbance.
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IsoArcH (www.isoarch.eu) is a new open-access and collaborative isotope database for bioarchaeological samples (humans, animals, plants and organic residues) from the Graeco-Roman world (sensu lato) and its margins.
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“A transect of environmental variability across South Asia and its influence on Late Pleistocene human innovation and occupation,” examines climate change as a driver of evolution and innovation.
Interdisciplinary research on Quaternary climate and environmental changes and their effects on human dispersals based on sediment cores from the Jubbah palaeolake basin (Saudi Arabia). Organized by Florian Ott and Michael Petraglia. August 31 - September 1, 2017
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A partnership has been established between the IsoMemo initiative and the PRIMDAT and HOMDAT pre-Holocene hominin and human stable isotope databases (MPI-SHH).
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A wooden container found in an ice patch at 2,650m in the Swiss Alps could help archaeologists shed new light on the spread and exploitation of cereal grains following a chance discovery.
A group of scientists has traced the domestication of cats by analyzing the DNA of ancient felines, discovering two major waves of domestication that left their mark in our modern housecat.
Petraglia’s work on the project will focus on fluctuating wet and arid phases in Arabia over the past 125,000 years, and how humans adapted to these changes.
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Florian Ott, Researcher at the Department of Archaeology, has been awarded the Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).
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The Oxford Companion to Cheese, with a contribution by Jessica Hendy, is a recipient of the 2017 James Beard Foundation Book Award for best Reference and Scholarship Book. The Oxford Companion to Cheese is a reference with over 850 entries on all aspects of cheese - historical and cultural, scientific, and technical - with contributors ranging from cheesemakers and cheese retailers to dairy scientists, microbiologists, historians, and anthropologists. Hendy’s entry is on “Archaeological Detection" and outlines how archaeologists and scientists identify dairying practices in the past.
A new paper published in the American Journal of Primatology provides a comprehensive plant reference dataset for a forest habitat of three primate species in Sri Lanka.
A new paper published in the Journal of Human Evolution demonstrates human reliance on tropical rainforest resources in the Late Pleistocene, 36,000 years ago.
10 years of ERC
The European Research Council is celebrating its 10th anniversary. With their project proposals Sealinks and Palaeodeserts, Nicole Boivin and Michael Petraglia were among the first winners of ERC grants.
How have humans colonised the entire planet and reshaped its ecosystems in the process? This unique and groundbreaking collection of essays explores human movement through time, the impacts of these movements on landscapes and other species, and the ways in which species have co-evolved and transformed each other as a result.
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Dr. Patrick Roberts of the Department of Archaeology, has been involved for the second time to an UNESCO meeting centred on tropical forest conservation.
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In a new paper in Evolutionary Anthropology, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History review the evidence for the time-depth and nature of Homo’s relationship with tropical forest environments.
The earth sciences have defined a new human age - now social scientists are calling for broader and more interdisciplinary discussion. Erle Ellis, Mark Maslin, Nicole Boivin, and Andrew Bauer:Involve social scientists in defining the Anthropocene. Nature, Vol. 540, 8. December 2016
One of our research themes is exploring the ways in which biological and cultural processes interact over long-term historic and prehistoric timescales. In a piece published Dec 7 in The Guardian, incoming postdoctoral fellow William Taylor highlights recent archaeological research on climate and ancient nomadic life in Mongolia, discussing implications for the future in the context of anthropogenic climate change.
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With their research project “Heirloom Microbes: The History and Legacy of Ancient Dairying Bacteria”, Dr. Jessica Hendy and Dr. Christina Warinner have won the Max Planck Society’s Annual Donation Award 2017.
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A multidisciplinary team of scientists recently excavated one of Zanzibar’s most important caves, revealing a complex human occupation history over the last 18,000 years. Initial occupations by Later Stone Age hunter-gatherers ranged between ~18,000 - 13,000 years ago. Later peoples inhabited the cave in the late first to early second millennia AD. The new research contrasts with previous excavations and interpretations, painting a radically different picture of human habitation in the Zanzibar Archipelago of Tanzania.
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Press release to: Boivin, N. L.; Melinda Zederc, M.; Fullerd, D.; Crowthere, A.; Larsonf, G.; Erlandsong, J.; Denhamh, T.; Petraglia, M. D.: Ecological consequences of human niche construction: Examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 113 (23) , S. 6388-6396 (2016) [more]
Press release to: Alison Crowther, Leilani Lucas, Richard Helm, Mark Horton, Ceri Shipton, Henry T. Wright, Sarah Walshaw, Matthew Pawlowicz, Chantal Radimilahy, Katerina Douka, Llorenç Picornell-Gelaber, Dorian Q Fuller, and Nicole Boivin (2016) Ancient crops provide first archaeological signature of the westward Austronesian expansion.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 113 (24), 6635-6640 (2016)
![Nicole Boivin on TV. Aired on Oct 25, 2016, 3sat [In German]](/821475/original-1518443893.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6Nzc5LCJvYmpfaWQiOjgyMTQ3NX0=--13a5444a115fb444e1f490fa8a9b062011939d8f)
'Green hell' has long been home for humans.
