The Research Institute of the University of Bucharest (ICUB), in collaboration with ‘Francisc J. Rainer’ Anthropological Institute of Romanian Academy, is pleased to announce the 27th ArchaeoSciences Seminar.
These seminars are an original initiative of our platform that aims to provide 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 21 February 2023 at 11:00 am (EET), and our guest speaker is Dr. Mario Novak from Institute for Anthropological Research, Zagreb (Croatia).
He will give a lecture entitled “Health, diet and population structure in prehistory of Croatia: novel insights from bioarchaeology, stable isotopes and ancient DNA”.
Mario Novak received his PhD from the University of Zagreb in 2008. Between 2009 and 2013, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Anthropological Centre, Croatian Academy of Science and Arts in Zagreb, and between 2013 and 2015 at the School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, Ireland. Currently, he serves as the Head of the Laboratory for Evolutionary Anthropology and Bioarchaeology and the Assistant Director for International Collaboration at the Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb. Dr Novak research deals with the reconstruction of past lifestyles through the analysis of human skeletal and dental remains with a special focus on health, diet and violence in ancient populations. In his work, he combines conventional (bio)archaeological methods with more advanced techniques such as ancient DNA and stable isotope analyses focusing on prehistoric and historic communities from Central / Southeastern Europe.
The current lecture will investigate human skeletal and dental remains as a rich source of information about past people. By studying them, we can obtain previously unknown data on various aspects of life (and death) of ancient individuals and communities, such as general health, diet and subsistence, as well as population structure and migrations. Here we present the results of a recent multidisciplinary study consisting of bioarchaeological, ancient DNA and carbon / nitrogen isotopic analyses conducted in prehistoric skeletal assemblages from Croatia focusing on Neolithic, Eneolithic and Bronze Age sites. The presentation will show the importance of using novel analytical techniques in archaeology and how these methods help us to reconstruct everyday lives of our distant ancestors.
This event will take place Thursday, 21 February 2023, starting at 11:00 am (EET) at the Faculty of Biology, in the Conference Room of the Research Platform in Biology and Systematic Ecology (Splaiul Independenței, no. 91-95, Bucharest).
We look forward to exciting discussions!
ArchaeoScience#RO Team