Department of Evolutionary Anthropology (DEA) Members

Annette OERTLE

I am a postdoctoral fellow with the Douka Palaeoproteomics and ZooMS laboratory in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Vienna. As an archaeological scientist (zooarchaeologist) I specialise in collagen peptide fingerprinting (ZooMS) and archaeomalacology. My research interests lie in tropical, coastal and island archaeology with particular focus on Australia, the Pacific Islands and Island South East Asia (ISEA). I am interested in questions regarding human evolution, changes in subsistence behaviours, and site formation processes. I completed my PhD in 2019 from the University of Sydney, Australia, and was a postdoctoral researcher on the ERC FINDER project based at the Max Planck Institute SHH Jena, Germany. I am currently a Marie-Skłodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellow leading project DENI-CESTOR (DENIsovan anCESTORs in Sahul: deciphering human evolution through molecular techniques) and PI on a Leaking Foundation Grant (Using ZooMS to identify new human fossils in archaeological deposits in Papua New Guinea). Marie-Skłodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellow (2022-2024) Principal Investigator: Leakey Foundation Grant (2022-2023)

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The creative millennia: transition to the Neolithic in the central Zagros

»The creative millennia: transition to the Neolithic in the central Zagros« Hojjat Darabi | Austrian Archaeological Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences; Department of Archaeology, Razi University The central Zagros received pioneering research on the emergence of early agricultural and village life by R. Braidwood in 1959-60. However, later shift of research toward the Levant put it in shadow for several decades until recent investigations have once again highlighted its key place in the Neolithization processes in west Asia. Unlike the Levant, where a protracted change from Epipaleolithic to Neolithic is seen, the border line between these two periods is evidently sharp in the central Zagros suggesting unprecedent features appeared in the first two millennia of the Holocene, a pivotal transitional time severely known in the region. Current evidence gained from the sites of Chogha Golan, Sheikhi Abad, Asiab, Ganj Dareh and a few others suggests that, following an environmental improvement at the end of the Younger Dryas, local communities engaged in short-term inhabitations, collective or communal ceremonies, and an increasing reliance on wild progenitors of early domestic plant and animal species. It is assumed that subsequent longer occupation towards sedentary life not only increased population numbers but also resulted in an environmental depression. This seems to have caused people to widen their diet toward low-level food production and subsequently agricultural village…

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Publications

Population dynamics and genetic connectivity in recent chimpanzee history

Fontsere, C., Kuhlwilm, M., Morcillo-Suarez, C., Alvarez-Estape, M., Lester, J.D., Gratton, P., Schmidt, J.M., Dieguez, P., Aebischer, T., Álvarez-Varona, P., Agbor, A., Angedakin, S., Assumang, A.K., Ayimisin, E.A., Bailey, E., Barubiyo, D., Bessone, M., Carretero-Alonso, A., Chancellor, R., Cohen, H., Danquah, E., Deschner, T., Dunn, A., Dupain, J., Egbe, V.E., Feliu, O., Goedmakers, A., Granjon, A.-C., Head, J., Hedwig, D., Hermans, V., Hernandez-Aguilar, R.A., Imong, I., Jones, S., Junker, J., Kadam, P., Kaiser, M., Kambere, M., Kambale, M.V., Kalan, A.K., Kienast, I., Kujirakwinja, D., Langergraber, K., Lapuente, J., Larson, B., Laudisoit, A., Lee, K., Llana, M., Llorente, M., Marrocoli, S., Morgan, D., Mulindahabi, F., Murai, M., Neil, E., Nicholl, S., Nixon, S., Normand, E., Orbell, C., Ormsby, L.J., Pacheco, L., Piel, A., Riera, L., Robbins, M.M., Rundus, A., Sanz, C., Sciaky, L., Sommer, V., Stewart, F.A., Tagg, N., Tédonzong, L.R., Ton, E., van Schijndel, J., Vergnes, V., Wessling, E.G., Willie, J., Wittig, R.M., Yuh, Y.G., Yurkiw, K., Zuberbuehler, K., Hecht, J., Vigilant, L., Boesch, C., Andrés, A.M., Hughes, D.A., Kühl, H.S., Lizano, E., Arandjelovic, M., Marques-Bonet, T., 2022. Population dynamics and genetic connectivity in recent chimpanzee history. Cell Genomics 2, 100133. read more

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HEAS welcomes NHM as a Partner

HEAS is delighted to welcome the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien (NHM) as a new partner in the research network. Gerhard Weber, head of HEAS said “This collaboration will mean that we broaden our expertise and extend our possibilities. We started to bridge between institutions in Vienna (University and Museum), to create an even more effective European hub for human evolution research”      

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Podiumsdiskussion: Seit wann gibt es moderne Menschen und was treibt sie an?

Am 13. Juni 2022 nahm Gerhard Weber, Leiter des HEAS, an einer Podiumsdiskussion im Universitätshauptgebäude der Universität Wien teil. Unser Verhalten hat sich weiterentwickelt: als Mittel zum Überleben. Heute stehen wir kurz davor, mit unserem Verhalten das Überleben zukünftiger Generationen zu gefährden. An der Universität Wien diskutierten Experten aus den unterschiedlichsten Bereichen am Ende unserer aktuellen #SEMESTERFRAGE die Faktoren und Muster, die unser Handeln bestimmen.     Podiumsdiskussion: Seit wann gibt es moderne Menschen und was treibt sie an?    

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Publications

Northeastern Asian and Jomon-related genetic structure in the Three Kingdoms period of Gimhae, Korea

Gelabert, P., Blazyte, A., Chang, Y., Fernandes, D.M., Jeon, S., Hong, J.G., Yoon, J., Ko, Y., Oberreiter, V., Cheronet, O., Özdoğan, K.T., Sawyer, S., Yang, S., Greytak, E.M., Choi, H., Kim, J., Kim, J.-I., Jeong, J., Bae, K., Bhak, J., Pinhasi, R., 2022. Northeastern Asian and Jomon-related genetic structure in the Three Kingdoms period of Gimhae, Korea. Current Biology read more

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HEAS team members from the Dept. of Evolutionary Anthropology have obtained the first ancient DNA data from the Korean Three Kingdoms period. Eight 1,700-year-old ancient Korean genomes have been sequenced.

An international team led by The University of Vienna and the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in collaboration with the National Museum of Korea has successfully sequenced and studied the whole genome of eight 1.700-year-old individuals dated to the Three Kingdoms period of Korea (approx. 57 BC-668 AD). The Team was led by Pere Gelabert and Prof. Ron Pinhasi with Victoria Obbreiter of HEAS together with Prof. Jong Bhak and Asta Blazyte from the UNIST and Prof. Kidong Bae from the National Museum of Korea. These are the first published genomes from this period in Korea and bring key information for the understanding of Korean population history. Links: University of Vienna Website Full article  

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News Video

HEAS Member featured in University of Vienna science magazine Rudolphina

Traces of human life are not only found in fossils but also in sediments. In the video, doctoral candidate and HEAS member Victoria Oberreiter explains how she develops new methods to retrieve ancient DNA from "dirt" to get a better insight into our past. "Most people would probably associate sediments with the dirt underneath their feet. But what if I tell you that with my research, we are able to extract ancient human DNA from exactly that source?" Victoria Oberreiter, PhD candidate at the Vienna Doctoral School of Ecology and Evolution, says. Her research focuses on extracting ancient DNA from mineralogical sources.   VIDEO: Heas Member Victoria Oberreiter explains her research  

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A new article has been published by HEAS member Martin Kuhlwilm et al. on the genomic history of chimpanzees.

In this paper, DNA data has been gathered from feces of hundreds of chimpanzee individuals living in Africa. Such genomic data from the wild provides a fine-grained picture of the history of our closest living relatives. During the past tens of thousands of years, differences between regions emerged, but there were also opportunities for gene flow and migration. The local genetic variation can now be used to track the geographic origin of captive and confiscated chimpanzees, which is important for the conservation of threatened species. Read full article

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Network Associates

Emese VÉGH

Emese Végh is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Palaeoproteomics and ZooMS on Katerina Douka’s ERC FINDER project at the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, currently working on recovering, analysing, and identifying hominin remains from Pleistocene Eurasia. She is also an Early Career Researcher at the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art (RLAHA), University of Oxford. She completed her DPhil (PhD) in scientific archaeology at the University of Oxford, which focused on the diagenesis and thermal stability of bioapatite, bone microbial bioerosion, molecular structure and composition, and biomechanical response of taphonomic bone. She is currently very interested in the environmental factors and age-induced degradation of both the organic and inorganic phases of bone and the interaction between the two fractions, especially in an evolutionary anthropological context. She particularly enjoys data analyses, multivariate statistics, and programming in Python to find new ways of solving archaeological research questions.

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Department of Evolutionary Anthropology (DEA) Members

Laura VAN DER SLUIS

I am a senior scientist in the team and laboratory of Tom Higham and Katerina Douka in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Vienna. My background is in archaeology, radiocarbon dating and stable isotope analysis on human and faunal remains for palaeodietary purposes. Previous projects I have worked on involved extinct giant tortoise bones from Mauritius, prehistoric human and faunal material from the Limfjord in Denmark, and Palaeolithic whale bone objects from France and Spain. I am interested in human-environmental interactions in the past, human evolution, and the effect of diagenetic alterations on isotopic signatures in bone and teeth.

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