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/Españolmore
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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
According to new research, nomadic horse culture – famously associated with Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes – can trace its roots back more than 3000 years in the eastern Eurasian Steppes, in the territory of modern Mongolia.
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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.
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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.
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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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