The ArchaeoSciences Platform of the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest (ICUB) is pleased to announce the 24th ArchaeoSciences Seminar.
These seminars are an original initiative of our division that has the goal of providing a setting for professionals in the Archaeological Sciences field from different parts of the world, to share knowledge, and transmit meaningful information about the latest issues regarding the current methods and approaches used to study the past. It is also a chance for Romanian students to learn more about the various interdisciplinary aspects of archaeology.
This seminar will take place on 29 July 2022, online, and our guest speaker is Professor Aurora Grandal d’Anglade from University of A Coruña (Spain).
She will give an online presentation entitled “Untangling the relationship of humans and animals in the past using stable isotopes: the case of the Northeast of the Iberian Peninsula since the Neolithic till the first Iron Age”.
Aurora Grandal d’Anglade since her integration as a doctoral candidate in 1988 in the Department of Geology, and later in the University Institute of Geology (IUX), of the University of A Coruña (UDC), Spain, her research work has focused on the study of fossil mammals in the Galician (NW of Spain) archaeological sites from different perspectives, including first of all, the taphonomic study of the sites, morphometry through multivariate analysis and biogeographic contextualisation. In this first phase, which was already a novelty in Galician universities, she also carried out paleontological prospecting and excavations in various karstic cavities in Galicia, that until then had hardly been studied, as well as old collections conserved in museums or other institutions. She carried out her doctoral thesis on Cova Eirós, a reference site for Cave Bears (Ursus spelaeus) in Galicia, where the first radiometric dates for bone remains (14C AMS) and flowstone (Uranium Series) were also obtained. This work represented a substantial advance in the knowledge of the quaternary palaeontology of Galicia and the extension of the range of distribution of this and other species not previously studied in the NW of the Peninsula. After a series of postdoctoral stays in Institutes and Museums of Palaeontology in the United Kingdom, Germany and Austria, in order to study the collections to strengthen her knowledge of this species, she implemented a new line of research at the UDC and throughout the Galician research system in isotopic biogeochemistry. Thus, in a pioneering way in Spain (since 1998), she performs stable C and N isotope analyses of bone collagen in Pleistocene cave bear remains, mainly aimed at studying the effects of hibernation on isotopic signatures. She extended her studies to other species in deposits of Pleistocene and Holocene age, including large mammals and humans of different prehistoric and historic periods and she implemented a new molecular technique for the identification of bone remains by peptide fingerprinting (ZooMS) in her lab. With the appearance of new techniques for extracting and sequencing ancient DNA from fossil remains, she contacted foreign teams that were carrying out this research. This led to the first collaborations in this line of research, which aims to reconstruct the evolutionary history, on the one hand, and the phylogeography of various Quaternary mammal species, on the other. One of the main objectives was to set up a laboratory dedicated exclusively to ancient DNA at the UDC. This was the moment when she started to develop her line of palaeogenetics at the UDC, where she works in collaboration with leading researchers in this field from different countries (Germany, Denmark, Italy, Portugal). The aim is to study the pattern of distribution, migration or extinction of large mammals in relation to climatic variations throughout the Upper Pleistocene and Holocene.
The current presentation reflect use of the stable isotopic analysis to several communities from the Northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, from Neolithic to Bronze age, studying bone remains in funerary silos and/or with ritual offerings. Among them, the special abundance of canids, including dogs and some foxes, is striking. In one of the sites, where the occupation lasted until the Iron Age, we were also able to study the evolution of these practices. All these data contribute to understanding the way of life of the people of the past, using a simple and economical technique, which only requires adequate preservation of the bone collagen.
The lecture will be online, on 29/07/2022, starting at 12:00 am (EET), via Google Meet Platform:
meet.google.com/xnk-cqyo-nev
