Precision dating of the Palaeolithic :
chronological mapping of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic of Eurasia
CURRENT TEAM MEMBERS
Tom
HIGHAM
I'm the Principal Investigator of PalaeoChron. I am the Director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit and Fellow of Keble College. I am interested in improving the AMS dating of material from Palaeolithic sites principally by developing better pretreatment chemistry methods, applying Bayesian analysis of the results and building spatio-temporal models.
Katerina
DOUKA
I'm a post-doctoral researcher on the project. I came to Oxford in 2005 and read for a MSc and a D.Phil in Archaeological Science. I coordinate archaeological sampling of sites in PalaeoChron, do the ABOX-SC dating, prep and coordinate samples for ultrafiltration AMS and work on the Bayesian modeling of results. I am now an ERC starting grant holder and based in the Max Planck in Jena
Thibaut
DEVIÈSE
I'm a post-doctoral researcher, specializing in organic chemistry and particularly the use of HPLC methods in archaeological science. I worked previously at the British Museum. My role on the PalaeoChron project is to apply, develop and improve methods of dating single amino acids from archaeological bones.
I am a post-doctoral researcher on the PalaeoChron project working on Thermoluminescence (TL) and Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) methods.
I am very interested in chronometric research into the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic of Eurasia and improving the methodologies behind reliable and accurate Luminescence dating of the period. My doctoral research focussed on the Quina Mousterian and dating it using OSL. I have also worked in the Americas on first settlement sites.
Marine
FROUIN
Jean-Luc
SCHWENNINGER
I direct the Luminescence Dating Laboratory at the Research Lab for Archaeology and the History of Art, at the University of Oxford.
I have extensive experience in OSL, including single grain analysis, and the dating of sites beyond the radiocarbon range, up to 300,000 years ago. I have worked in a wide range of contexts, from Pleistocene Greenland to Morocco and from the sand dunes of Scotland to Madgascar.
I am involved in the dating of sediments and burnt flint from sites in the PalaeoChron.
Dan
COMESKEY
Originally from New Zealand I studied for my BSc in chemistry at the University of Canterbury (Christchurch, NZ). After this I spent several years at HortResearch in the synthetic and analytical chemistry groups working in biosecurity and crop breeding programs. In 2009 I immigrated to the UK joining the Sonochemistry Centre at Coventry University. I joined the PalaeoChron team as a chemistry technician in June 2014.
Christopher
BRONK RAMSEY
I am the Director of the Research Lab for Archaeology and the History of Art, Director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit and Bodley Fellow of Merton College. My main research has been in the application of physical sciences to archaeology and the environmental sciences and, in particular, in the development and use of radiocarbon isotopes. The OxCal program I developed will provide radiocarbon calibration and analysis of the chronological information obtained by the PalaeoChron team.
James
McCULLAGH
I am the Director of the Mass Spectrometry Research Facility and a University Research Lecturer at the Department of Chemistry. I am also a Visiting Scholar at the Research Laboratory for Scientific Archaeology. My doctoral research focussed on the development of HPLC separation of single amino acids from archaeological hair and bone for palaeodietary reconstruction. Part of this research was also aimed at improving the AMS dating of bone, something that I am continuing to investigate as part of the PalaeoChron project.
Michael
BUCKLEY
I am a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. My research focuses on species identification in ancient and degraded bone fragments using protein mass spectrometry. I developed the ZooMS (‘Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry’) method, which uses collagen peptides fractionated by SPE to determine molecular fingerprints using MALDI-TOF-MS. I will be working on identifying bones for AMS dating using ZooMS to identify all of the animal and human bones from the sites being worked on by PalaeoChron.
Rachel
HOPKINS
I am a D.Phil student on the PalaeoChron project, starting in October 2014. I just submitted my dissertation and now I am working as a post-doc on the project. I was an MSc student in Archaeological Science in Oxford and before that read for a BA at the University of Zurich. My MSc dissertation concerned the radiocarbon dating of tooth enamel; a very challenging problem. I am keen to extend this type of work in the PalaeoChron project, and to combine methodological developments in the radiocarbon method with their application to the Palaeolithic record of Europe and wider Eurasia. My project is focusing on the movement and expansion of modern humans along the Danube corridor, and dating and redating several key sites there using the most reliable chronometric methods we have.
Eileen
JACOB
I am a DPhil student on the PalaeoChron project. I was an undergraduate here in Oxford previously. I joined PalaeoChron in 2014 as an MSc student and completed my dissertation in 2015. My DPhil project extends my earlier research on dating single amino acids with HPLC. This method reduces contamination and can be applied to low-collagen bone, enabling the dating of previously unsuitable Upper Palaeolithic bone. I am applying the methods to look at Pleistocene animal extinctions across Europe and wider Eurasia with several collaborators both within Oxford and beyond.
PAST TEAM MEMBERS
I am a Palaeolithic archaeologist and specialise in the study of stone tools. I read for a DPhil at Oxford University and previously studied in Sheffield and London.
I am researching the archaeology of sites of interest to the PalaeoChron project, focusing on stone tools and material suitable for direct dating. I am now a Marie Sklodowsa Curie post-doc based at the Université Bordeaux.
Natasha
REYNOLDS
Lorena
BECERRA VALDIVIA
Hailing from Chile, I was an MSc student in Archaeological Science at the University of Oxford in 2014-15. My project focused on establishing a chronology for Middle and Upper Palaeolithic sites in Iran, from the analysis of hominid bone samples and archaeological materials. I worked on material from excavated collections in the USA, Germany and Belgium, as well as Iran itself. Now I am working towards a DPhil on the chronology of early human settlement of the Americas, again in the ORAU. I'm at Merton College.
Cara
KUBIAK
I was an MSc student in Archaeological Science at the University of Oxford and a member of Wolfson College in 2015-16. I worked on the ZooMS method. My research applied mass spectrometry of collagenous peptides to identify highly fragmented faunal material at Vindija Cave, Croatia to genus or species level. In the course of this work I discovered a new Neanderthal remain. This was recently published in PNAS.
I was an MSc student in Archaeological Science on the PalaeoChron project from 2014-2015 with a particular interest in the work being conducted using soft-ionization mass spectrometry or ZooMS. My research focused on Denisova Cave, using ZooMS to identify hominid remains amongst the large assemblage of fauna located at the site. I identified a new Neanderthal bone using this method and I published the results of this work recently in the journal Scientific Reports. I am now working for a DPhil on the new FINDER ERC grant with Katerina Douka at the MPI-SHH in Jena.
Samantha
BROWN
I worked as an MSc student in Archaeological Science on the PalaeoChron project between 2014-2015 and my research focused on the AMS radiocarbon dating of single amino acids from bone collagen using HPLC. I dated highly contaminated bone from sites in North America as a test of the HYP method. I am now working on publishing the results and have a paper in submission with PNAS on some of the results.
Crista
WATHEN
Aditi
DAVE
I was an M.Sc. student in Archaeological Sciences at the University of Oxford and a member of Brasenose College. I’m from India and previously did my M.Sc. in Chemistry from the University of Delhi, India. I joined the PalaeoChron project in February 2015. My project concerned the application and development of Thermoluminescence (TL) dating of small burnt flints from the Palaeolithic site of Riparo Mochi, Italy.
Alexander
BENN
I was an MSc student in Archaeological Science, having also studied for my undergraduate degree at Oxford. I worked on material from El Castillo through the application of Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (or ZooMS) for my thesis. I am interested in exploring whether the Transitional Aurignacian was a Homo sapiens or Homo neanderthalensis industry.
Ségolène
VANDEVELDE
I joined the PalaeoChron team in June 2017 to work on the technically challenging project of radiocarbon dating soot deposits trapped within concretions such as speleothems, principally at the key site of Grotte Mandrin in Rhône Valley, France. Since October 2015 I have been a Université Paris 1 – Panthéon-Sorbonne Ph D candidate. After a short stay at the RLAHA in Oxford in June 2016, a fellowship from the Maison Française d’Oxford offered me the opportunity of a one-month residency (June 2017) to continue my work with the PalaeoChron team.
Maria Emanuela
ODDO
I was a visiting PhD student with the PalaeoChron team from the IMT School for Advanced Studies in Italy. My project, funded through the ERASMUS programme, aims at bridging the theoretical debate regarding chronology and periodization with the practice of dating samples and modelling results. The wide variety of dating methods used in PalaeoChron and the way they interact provided the basis for theoretical reflections, with a special focus on the integration of qualitative and quantitative data.
Lauren
BELL
I was an MSc student in Archaeological Science with a background in simulating past landscapes in Japan based on pollen core data. I was a member of Harris Manchester College here at the University of Oxford. My dissertation project was focused on applying the ZooMS method to large faunal assemblages in two key sites in Italy associated with the Uluzzian technocomplex to attempt to located hominin remains. Currently there is some debate over whether the industry is AMH or Neanderthal.
