Plants have always played an integral part in human life, as fuel, medicine, food and other uses. But prehistoric plant use is difficult to study, because plant remains such as seeds, leaves, fruits and roots rarely survive in the archaeological record. Remarkably, plant DNA can survive in sediments for tens of thousands of years, even without the preservation of visible remains. Such sedimentary ancient DNA analyses allow us to study human behaviour with regards to plant use from a diversity of archaeological sites.
In this project we will analyses sediment samples from a number of different, highly interesting archaeological sites. One of the sites is the well-known cave Kirkehelleren, recently excavated through the project Arcave lead by Erlend Jørgensen. In addition we will analyse unique sites dated to the Middle and Upper Paleolithic from several other countries.
The student will be supervised by Sanne Boessenkool and be part of the vibrant and friendly Archaeogenomics group at CEES
(https://www.mn.uio.no/cees/english/research/groups/archaeogenomics/).
For more information please contact Sanne Boessenkool