Precision dating of the Palaeolithic :
chronological mapping of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic of Eurasia
INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATORS
PalaeoChron collaborates with a large network of colleagues from around the world who provide knowledge, permits and material for study.
Prof. Anatoliy
Derevianko
Director of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Academician Derevianko is particularly interested in the Palaeolithic of Eurasia, the early peopling of the continent and the chronology, stratigraphy and correlation of Palaeolithic cultures across the vast arid zones of the region. He has directed several major excavations in Siberia and Russian Far Eastern territories, as well as in Montenegro, Japan, Korea, China and Mongolia.
He is the director of the Denisova Cave multi-disciplinary research and our major collaborator in Siberia and adjacent areas.
Prof. Annamaria Ronchitelli
Associate Professor, Dip. Scienze Fisiche, della Terra e dell'Ambiente, University of Siena, Italy
Annamaria's main research interests concern the Middle Palaeolithic in Southern Italy, the transition from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic in Italy, the Upper Paleolithic. She has directed about one hundred excavations fields. She represents Italy in the UISPP, Commission 8 (Upper Palaeolithic of Eurasia).
The PalaeoChron team works with the team in Siena in a series of key Palaeolithic sites, including Cavallo and Castelcivita Caves in southern Italy.
Dr Stefano Grimaldi
Assistant Professor, Laboratorio di Archeologia preistorica, medievale e Geografia storica “B. Bagolini”, Dipartimento di Lettere e Filosofia, Universita degli Studi di Trento, Trento, Italy
Stefano Grimaldi is an assistant professor at the University of Trento. His research revolves around hunter-gatherer societies, the European prehistoric record, and general aspects of Human Evolution. Stefano is an expert in lithics techno-functional analyses and use-wear studies.
Since 2007, he has been the scientific director of the on-going excavations at the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic site of Riparo Mochi in the Balzi Rossi, N. Italy.
Dr Andrei A. Sinitsyn
Institute for the History of Material Culture,
St. Petersburg,
Russia.
Andrei A. Sinitsyn graduated from the St. Petersburg University (1973). He received his PhD ("The Gorodtsovian in the context of East European Upper Palaeolithic") in 1983 from the Institute for the History of Material Culture, St. Petersburg, where he works since 1972. Since 1998 he directs the Kostenki excavation group. Main areas of research: Upper Palaeolithic, chronology and periodization, cultural variability, formal analyses of lithic assemblages, reconstruction of cultural processes.
Dr Andrei Krivoshapkin
Leading Researcher, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk &
Head of Archaeology and Ethnography Department, Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk
Andrei Krivoshapkin graduated from the Novosibirsk State University. He has been the director of research projects and field campaigns in Siberian Altai (e.g. Strashnaya Cave) and the former Soviet Central Asia (e.g. Obi Rakhmat in Uzbekistan). He is interested in the origins and nature of cultural and technological innovations during Middle and Upper Paleolithic periods in Central Asia, and the formation of "human modernity". He has authored and co-authored several research articles on international journals.
Dr Maria Dobrovolskaya
Leading researcher, Institute of Archaeology, Russian Academy of Sciences &
Professor at Moscow Psychological-Pedagogical University.
Maria Dobrovolskaya graduated from the Department of Physical Anthropology at the Moscow State University. She is the author of more than 200 publications, including the books “Ecology of Ancient Eastern European Forest Zone population” (1996), “Man and his food” (2005).
She is the director/co-director of several bioarchaeological research projects devoted to paleodiet reconstructions and bone chemical, isotopic and histological analysis.
Dr Ron Pinhasi
Associate Professor, School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, Ireland
Ron Pinhasi is interested in the integration of ancient DNA methods, isotope analysis, anthropology and archaeology to the study of the biology, mobility and behavior of past human populations in Europe during the last 45,000 years. He is the author of more than 50 research articles and the editor of 2 books.
Dr. Pinhasi and his team excavates in western Georgia and PalaeoChron is collaborating with him on the dating of the important site of Satsurblia.
Prof. Chris Stringer
Research Leader in Human Origins at Natural History Museum London, UK &
Visiting Professor at the Royal Holloway University of London, UK
Image copyright: Natural History Museum, UK
Chris Stringer conducts wide-ranging research on modern human origins, collaborating with other palaeontologists, archaeologists, dating specialists, and geneticists.
He directed the "Ancient Human Occupation of Britain" project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, from 2001-2013, and now co-directs the "Pathways to Ancient Britain" project, funded by the Calleva Foundation.
He is the author of several widely-acclaimed books and research articles.
Dr Rachel Wood
Research Scientist,
Research School for Earth Sciences, ANU, Canberra
Formerly at the ORAU, RLAHA, University of Oxford
Rachel Wood read for an MSc and D.Phil at the University of Oxford. Her D.Phil work focussed on the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition of Iberia. Rachel's recent work has been published in the Journal of Human Evolution, PNAS, Archaeometry and Nature.
She is now Research Officer in the Radiocarbon Facility in Canberra at the ANU. She is responsible for chemical pretreatment and the running of the laboratory there.
Dr Rob Dinnis
Researcher, Research Laboratory for Archaeology,University of Oxford.
Rob Dinnis is an archaeologist whose main research interest is the colonisation of Europe by early modern humans. His present work is focussed on the Early Upper Palaeolithic of both Eastern and Western Europe. Rob is also an active field archaeologist, and has directed excavations at several British Middle/Upper Palaeolithic cave sites. Starting summer 2015 Rob will undertake new fieldwork at Kent’s Cavern with Chris Proctor.
Dr Nika Tushabramishvili
Ilia State University,
Str. Cholokashvili 3/5,
Tbilisi, Georgia
Nika Tushabramishvili is a Georgian archaeologist with several decades of experience working in the Palaeolithic of the Caucasus mountains. He has undertaken excavations at several key sites such as Bronze Cave, Ortvalde Klde and Bondi Cave and is one of our key collaborators in the region.
Prof. Mikhail Shunkov
Deputy Director of The Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences
Prof. Shunkov is the director of the permanent basecamp of "Denisova Cave" located in the Siberian Altai, in the vicinity of which multidisciplinary research of the earliest (Karama) and the most informative (Denisova Cave, Ust-Karakol) Palaeolithic sites in Northern Asia is carried out. His research interests include the initial peopling of Eurasia, palaeogeography and human palaeoecology in the Pleistocene, and early human-environment interactions. He is the author and coauthor of 8 monographs and more than 300 scientific articles.
Dr Paolo Boscato
Researcher of the Dep. of Scienze Fisiche, della Terra e dell'Ambiente of the University of Siena.
Paolo Boscato is an archaeozoologist, specializing in the study of Upper Pleistocene macromammals of Southern Italy. His studies focus on the reconstruction of the palaeoenvironment and hominind economy during the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, using macromammal fossils.
Dr Adriana Moroni
Department of Physical, Earth and Environmental Sciences Research Unit of Prehistory and Anthropology Via Laterina, 8, 53100 Siena, Italy
Adriana Moroni is an archaeologist specialising in the Uluzzian and related industries of the early Upper Palaeolithic of Italy and the Mediterranean rim, as well as the Middle Palaeolithic of central Italy. She currently works as a member of the SUCCESS ERC team digging at the site of Castelcivita. Her interests also extend in to the Neolithic and Bronze age periods.
Dr Marco Peresani
Researcher, Dipartimento di Studi UmanisticiItaly, Università degli Studi di Ferrara, Italy
Marco Peresani designs and coordinates research projects focused on the human populations in Central Italy and the Italian Alps during the Middle Palaeolithic. His research involves numerous sites, among which is Grotta di Fumane and Grotta del Rio Secco. Another research focus is the human colonization of the Apennine and Alpine regions in the Late Glacial and the Postglacial. His publications include four edited books and over 200 papers published as articles in peer-review journals, chapters in volumes and contributions to conference proceedings.
Dr Konstantin N. Gavrilov
Deputy director of the Department of Stone Age Archaeology in the Institute of Archaeology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow.
Konstantin N. Gavrilov graduated in 1990 and received his PhD from the Moscow State University in 1994. Currently, he directs the excavation of the Upper Palaeolithic site of Khotylevo 2.
He studies lithic tool typology, mobile art and spatial structure of the Upper Palaeolithic sites of Central Russian Plain, as well Eastern and Central Europe.
Dr Maria Mednikova
Leading researcher, Institute of Archaeology of RAS &
Professor in the Moscow Psychological-Pedagogical University.
Maria Mednikova is interested in issues of bioarchaeology, the lifestyle of ancient societies, cultural modifications of human body, and evolutionary anthropology as a whole.
She has authored and co-authored more than 250 scientific publications, including 5 books on subjectes such as the practice of trepanation in ancient Eurasia, the tattoo as historical source, and the postcranial morphology and taxonomy of the human remains from Okladnikhov Cave in Siberia.
Dr Alexandra Buzhilova
Leading researcher, Institute of Archaeology, Russian Academy of Sciences &
Corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Alexandra Buzhilova is a leading Russian physical anthropologist. She graduated from the Department of Anthropology at Moscow State University. She is the Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Research Institute and Museum of Anthropology, Moscow State University. Her research interests include human ecology, paleoanthropology, demography, Bioarchaeology, paleogenetics. She has authored and co-authored 7 books and over 240 scientific articles.
Dr Ludovic Slimak
Researcher at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), UMR 5608, TRACES, University of Toulouse, France.
Ludovic Slimak is researcher at the CNRS. Following his PhD on "the last expressions of the Mousterian" in 2004 he held academic positions and directed field campaigns in various contexts, from Ethiopia to the Arctic Circle in Russia, passing by central Turkey where he discovered and excavated the Kaletepe sequence.
He is currently the director of the Grotte Mandrin and Grand Abri aux Puces archaeological projects in Mediterranean France.
Dr Christopher Bergman
Principal Archaeologist, URS Corporation, USA
Christopher Bergman both studied and taught at the Institute of Archaeology, London, between 1979 and 1989, completing his Ph.D. dissertation on the key Middle-Upper Palaeolithic site of Ksar Akil, Lebanon. He has spent nearly 40 years considering Ksar Akil, specifically its chronological and geo-stratigraphic position within Levantine prehistory. Dr. Bergman has also worked extensively on the Upper Palaeolithic of Europe, North Africa, and Japan, focusing on characterization of stone and bone/antler tool industries, as well as their roles in technological organization.
Dr Chris Proctor
Researcher,
Torquay Museum,
England
Chris Proctor is a sedimentologist working on late Quaternary cave sites in SW Britain. He has a particular interest in integrating modern research with analysis of historic excavations to gain a fuller understanding of the sedimentary context and taphonomy of their Palaeolithic archaeology and faunas. He has studied numerous sites in the region and is currently working on the early modern human occupation of Kent’s Cavern.
Prof. Dan Adler
Department of Anthropology
University of Connecticut,
Storrs, Connecticut 06269, USA