Doneus, N., Doneus, M., 2024. Intensively Cultivated Roman Villae Estates: Case Study of Medulin Bay (Istria, Croatia). Archaeological Prospection. read more
Schwall, C., Brandl, M., Börner, M., Lindauer, S., Deckers, K., David-Cuny, H., Yousif, E., Jasim, S.A., Horejs, B., 2024. Kalba: research on trade networks of a prehistoric coastal community on the Gulf of Oman, United Arab Emirates. Antiquity, 1-8. read more
Sandoval-Castellanos, E., Hare, A.J., Lin, A.T., Dimopoulos, E.A., Daly, K.G., Geiger, S., Mullin, V.E., Wiechmann, I., Mattiangeli, V., Lühken, G., Zinovieva, N.A., Zidarov, P., Çakırlar, C., Stoddart, S., Orton, D., Bulatović, J., Mashkour, M., Sauer, E.W., Horwitz, L.K., Horejs, B., Atici, L., Özkaya, V., Mullville, J., Parker Pearson, M., Mainland, I., Card, N., Brown, L., Sharples, N., Griffiths, D., Allen, D., Arbuckle, B., Abell, J.T., Duru, G., Mentzer, S.M., Munro, N.D., Uzdurum, M., Gülçur, S., Buitenhuis, H., Gladyr, E., Stiner, M.C., Pöllath, N., Özbaşaran, M., Krebs, S., Burger, J., Frantz, L., Medugorac, I., Bradley, D.G., Peters, J., 2024. Ancient mitogenomes from Pre-Pottery Neolithic Central Anatolia and the effects of a Late Neolithic bottleneck in sheep (Ovis aries). Science Advances 10, eadj0954. read more
Šimková, P.G., Wurm, L., Fornai, C., Krenn, V.A., Weber, G.W., 2024. Shape variation in modern human upper premolars. PloS one 19, e0301482. read more
On the 6th February 2024 HEAS hosted a group of children from children from around Vienna for a workshop on 'Archaeology for Kids' at the HEAS partner the Natural History Museum. The children learnt about the main prehistoric and historical eras with interactive examples of representative sites, monuments, and objects. We hope this hands on experience sparked an interest for the children in ancient cultures and the modern scientific methods used to study them. To learn more about the workshop and other work by Dr. Alexandra Dolea please see her blog post below: https://www.ilovearchaeology.com/post/archaeology-for-kids-workshop
Hagmann, D., Ankerl, B., Kirchengast, N., Cheronet, O., Greisinger, M., Miglbauer, R., Kirchengast, S., 2024. Double feature: First genetic evidence of a mother-daughter double burial in Roman period Austria. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 55, 104479. read more
Hämmerle, M., Rymbekova, A., Gelabert, P., Sawyer, S., Cheronet, O., Bernardi, P., Calvignac-Spencer, S., Kuhlwilm, M., Guellil, M., Pinhasi, R., 2024. Link between Monkeypox Virus Genomes from Museum Specimens and 1965 Zoo Outbreak. Emerging Infectious Disease journal 30, 815. read more
HEAS Member Martin Fieder has published a new US textbook on social status, number of children in modern societies, confirming evolutionary assumptions on social status and reproduction. This is the first book to fully examine, from an evolutionary perspective, the relationship between social status and fertility in human societies before, during, and after the demographic transition. In most non-human social species, social status or relative rank in a social group is positively associated with the number of offspring, with high-status individuals typically having more offspring than low-status individuals. Humans, however, appear to be different. As societies have become richer, fertility has fallen to unprecedented lows, with some developed societies now at or below replacement fertility. Within rich societies, women in higher-income families often have fewer children than women in lower-income families. Evolutionary theory suggests that the relationship between social status and fertility is likely to be somewhat different for men and women, so it is important to examine this relationship for men and women separately. When this is done, the positive association between individual SES and fertility is often clear in less developed, pre-transition societies, especially for men. Once the demographic transition begins, it is elite families, and especially the women of elite families, who lead the way in fertility decline. Post-transition, the evidence from a wide range of developed…
Schauer, M., 2024. Coefficient corrections for portable X-ray fluorescence data of the Niton XL3t No. 97390 (coefcor I-IV) developed according to the Munich procedure. Data in Brief 53, 109914. read more
HEAS member, Günther Karl Kunst, had his publication on 'The 10,000-year biocultural history of fallow deer and its implications for conservation policy' featured on Science ORF, the national public broadcaster for Austria. https://science.orf.at/stories/3223579/ Link to publication
Yeshurun, R., Doyon, L., Tejero, J.-M., Walter, R., Huber, H., Andrews, R., Kitagawa, K., 2024. Identification and quantification of projectile impact marks on bone: new experimental insights using osseous points. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 16, 43. read more
Baker, K.H., Miller, H., Doherty, S., Gray, H.W.I., Daujat, J., Çakırlar, C., Spassov, N., Trantalidou, K., Madgwick, R., Lamb, A.L., Ameen, C., Atici, L., Baker, P., Beglane, F., Benkert, H., Bendrey, R., Binois-Roman, A., Carden, R.F., Curci, A., De Cupere, B., Detry, C., Gál, E., Genies, C., Kunst, G.K., Liddiard, R., Nicholson, R., Perdikaris, S., Peters, J., Pigière, F., Pluskowski, A.G., Sadler, P., Sicard, S., Strid, L., Sudds, J., Symmons, R., Tardio, K., Valenzuela, A., van Veen, M., Vuković, S., Weinstock, J., Wilkens, B., Wilson, R.J.A., Evans, J.A., Hoelzel, A.R., Sykes, N., 2024. The 10,000-year biocultural history of fallow deer and its implications for conservation policy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121, e2310051121. read more
I am Professor for Prehistory and Scientific Director of the Austrian Archaeological Institute at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, where I am heading the Department for Prehistory & WANA Archaeology. My research focuses on late Pleistocene to Holocene phenomena in Southeast Europe and West Asia with excavations and geoarchaeological surveys to produce, analyse and model new primary data of early communities and their environmental contexts. I enjoy working with interdisciplinary teams of students, ECR’s and experts to gain new insights into neolithization, intensification & centralisation.
Margaret L Antonio, Clemens L Weiß, Ziyue Gao, Susanna Sawyer, Victoria Oberreiter, Hannah M Moots, Jeffrey P Spence, Olivia Cheronet, Brina Zagorc, Elisa Praxmarer, Kadir Toykan Özdoğan, Lea Demetz, Pere Gelabert, Daniel Fernandes, Michaela Lucci, Timka Alihodžić, Selma Amrani, Pavel Avetisyan, Christèle Baillif-Ducros, Željka Bedić, Audrey Bertrand, Maja Bilić, Luca Bondioli, Paulina Borówka, Emmanuel Botte, Josip Burmaz, Domagoj Bužanić, Francesca Candilio, Mirna Cvetko, Daniela De Angelis, Ivan Drnić, Kristián Elschek, Mounir Fantar, Andrej Gaspari, Gabriella Gasperetti, Francesco Genchi, Snežana Golubović, Zuzana Hukeľová, Rimantas Jankauskas, Kristina Jelinčić Vučković, Gordana Jeremić, Iva Kaić, Kevin Kazek, Hamazasp Khachatryan, Anahit Khudaverdyan, Sylvia Kirchengast, Miomir Korać, Valérie Kozlowski, Mária Krošláková, Dora Kušan Špalj, Francesco La Pastina, Marie Laguardia, Sandra Legrand, Tino Leleković, Tamara Leskovar, Wiesław Lorkiewicz, Dženi Los, Ana Maria Silva, Rene Masaryk, Vinka Matijević, Yahia Mehdi Seddik Cherifi, Nicolas Meyer, Ilija Mikić, Nataša Miladinović-Radmilović, Branka Milošević Zakić, Lina Nacouzi, Magdalena Natuniewicz-Sekuła, Alessia Nava, Christine Neugebauer-Maresch, Jan Nováček, Anna Osterholtz, Julianne Paige, Lujana Paraman, Dominique Pieri, Karol Pieta, Stefan Pop-Lazić, Matej Ruttkay, Mirjana Sanader, Arkadiusz Sołtysiak, Alessandra Sperduti, Tijana Stankovic Pesterac, Maria Teschler-Nicola, Iwona Teul, Domagoj Tončinić, Julien Trapp, Dragana Vulović, Tomasz Waliszewski, Diethard Walter, Miloš Živanović, Mohamed el Mostefa Filah, Morana Čaušević-Bully, Mario Šlaus, Dušan Borić, Mario Novak, Alfredo Coppa, Ron Pinhasi, Jonathan K Pritchard (2024) Stable population structure in Europe since the Iron…
Hagmann, D. ( 2024). "Adopt, Adapt, and Share! FAIR Archeological Data for Studying Roman Rural Landscapes in Northern Noricum." Journal of Open Humanities Data 10 (1):13. read more
The landscape of present-day Austria was shaped by the ice ages, the last of which ended around 10,000 years ago. Modern scientific methods allow us to gain an insight into these processes long before historical records exist. One controversial question to date has been how long Lake Neusiedl has existed. Because there was no reliable evidence, estimates ranged from thousands to millions of years. In a joint endeavour, scientists from four Austrian universities have now succeeded in narrowing down the age of Lake Neusiedl to around 25,000 years. Stephanie Neuhuber from the Institute of Applied Geology at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) Vienna, under whose leadership the study was carried out, is surprised by this age, which coincides with the peak of the last ice age, as it was actually particularly dry at that time. The age was determined by radiocarbon dating of carbonate minerals formed in the lake water and deposited in mud on the lake bed. Read more here Read full paper
Kerttu Majander, Marta Pla-Díaz, Louis du Plessis, Natasha Arora, Jose Filippini, Luis Pezo-Lanfranco, Sabine Eggers, Fernando González-Candelas, Verena J. Schuenemann, (2024). Redefining the treponemal history throughpre-Columbian genomes from Brazil, Nature read more
Blanz, Magdalena, Marie Balasse, Delphine Frémondeau, Erika Gál, Anett Osztás, Anna Zs Biller, Éva Á. Nyerges, Denis Fiorillo, Eszter Bánffy, and Maria Ivanova (2023). "Early Neolithic pastoral land use at Alsónyék-Bátaszék, Hungary (Starčevo culture): New insights from stable isotope ratios." PloS one 18(12): e0295769. read more
The oldest known genome of a bacterium from a family that causes diseases such as syphilis has been identified in prehistoric human remains from Brazil, a Nature paper reveals. The finding helps to shed light on the origins of this disease group. Closely related but distinct subspecies of Treponema pallidum bacteria cause different types of treponemal disease, such as venereal syphilis and a non-sexually transmitted disease known as bejel. The origins of these diseases are debated: some argue that the syphilis epidemic in late 15th century Europe arose after Columbus’ expeditions introduced the bacteria from the Americas. Previous theories of the emergence of these diseases have been based on studies of ancient bone pathology but definitive evidence to identify the causative subspecies has eluded researchers. Verena Schuenemann and colleagues extracted DNA from four individuals from a nearly 2,000-year-old Brazilian burial site and were able to reconstruct the genomes of T. pallidum bacteria that had infected them. Their analysis revealed that the pathogen responsible was most closely related to the modern species that causes bejel. The finding adds strength to previous suggestions that civilizations in the Americas experienced treponemal infections in pre-Columbian times, and that treponemal disease was already present in the New World at least 500 years before Columbus set sail. The study does not shed light on the emergence…
We are pleased to share that a HEAS member, Muhammad Bilal Sharif, has successfully completed his PhD under the supervision of Dr. Elmira Mohandesan and Prof. Katrin Schaefer. He defended his thesis "The Threads of Time in Equine Management: A Genetic Exploration of Iron Age and Roman Equids, and New Zealand's Feral Horses" on January 5th, 2024. Congratulations to Dr. Sharif on this remarkable achievement!
The virtual reconstruction of the Ethiopian Australopithecus afarensis specimen A.L. 444-2 from Hadar was now released for free use in the digital@rchive of fossil hominoids https://www.virtual-anthropology.com/3d-data/free-data/ The reconstruction was made in the Virtual Anthropology Lab at University of Vienna by Sascha Senck, Stefano Benazzi, Gerhard Weber, and others. It is described in detail in the supplement of “Ledogar, J. A., Senck, S., Villmoare, B. A., Smith, A. L., Weber, G. W., Richmond, B. G., Dechow, P. C., Ross, C. F., Grosse, I. R., Wright, B. W., Wang, Q., Byron, C., Benazzi, S., Carlson, K. J., Carlson, K. B., McIntosh, L. C., Van Casteren, A., & Strait, D. S. (2022). Mechanical compensation in the evolution of the early hominin feeding apparatus [Article]. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 289(1977), Article 20220711. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.0711 The surface file of the reconstructed cranium and the endocast are available.
Dominik Hagmann is currently working on several projects, primarily focusing on Roman archaeology in Austria, and is a lecturer at the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology (University of Vienna). Since 2023, Dominik has been a principal investigator in the ÖAW-funded Go!Digital 3.0 long-term-archiving project IUENNA at the kärnten.museum, together with his colleague Franziska Reiner (ÖAI). In 2022, he obtained a Ph.D. degree (with honors) from the University of Vienna (Doctoral School for Cultural and Historical Studies) on his thesis "Roman Rural Landscapes in Noricum. Archaeological Studies on Roman Settlements in the Hinterland of Northern Noricum." As an archaeologist, Dominik focuses on Roman studies in terms of settlement and landscape archaeology in the Danube Basin, implementing state-of-the-art digital and interdisciplinary methods in his research. He participated in numerous field campaigns in Central and Southern Europe and the Middle East during third-party-funded international and national research projects.
van der Sluis, L.G., McGrath, K., Thil, F., Cersoy, S., Pétillon, J.M., Zazzo, A., 2023. Identification and tentative removal of collagen glue in Palaeolithic worked bone objects: implications for ZooMS and radiocarbon dating. Scientific Reports 13, 22119. read more
Olalde, I., Carrión, P., Mikić, I., Rohland, N., Mallick, S., Lazaridis, I., Mah, M., Korać, M., Golubović, S., Petković, S., Miladinović-Radmilović, N., Vulović, D., Alihodžić, T., Ash, A., Baeta, M., Bartík, J., Bedić, Ž., Bilić, M., Bonsall, C., Bunčić, M., Bužanić, D., Carić, M., Čataj, L., Cvetko, M., Drnić, I., Dugonjić, A., Đukić, A., Đukić, K., Farkaš, Z., Jelínek, P., Jovanovic, M., Kaić, I., Kalafatić, H., Krmpotić, M., Krznar, S., Leleković, T., M. de Pancorbo, M., Matijević, V., Milošević Zakić, B., Osterholtz, A.J., Paige, J.M., Tresić Pavičić, D., Premužić, Z., Rajić Šikanjić, P., Rapan Papeša, A., Paraman, L., Sanader, M., Radovanović, I., Roksandic, M., Šefčáková, A., Stefanović, S., Teschler-Nicola, M., Tončinić, D., Zagorc, B., Callan, K., Candilio, F., Cheronet, O., Fernandes, D., Kearns, A., Lawson, A.M., Mandl, K., Wagner, A., Zalzala, F., Zettl, A., Tomanović, Ž., Keckarević, D., Novak, M., Harper, K., McCormick, M., Pinhasi, R., Grbić, M., Lalueza-Fox, C., Reich, D., 2023. A genetic history of the Balkans from Roman frontier to Slavic migrations. Cell 186, 5472-5485.e5479. read more
HEAS Member Sylvia Kirchengast was interviewed for Spektrum magazine on her work on the evolution of the menopause. Read the full article (in German) here: Menopause: Für wen eignet sich eine Hormontherapie ? - Spektrum der Wissenschaft
Katharina Rebay-Salisbury is professor of Prehistory of Humanity at the University of Vienna and directs the research group ‘Prehistoric Identities’ at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Enthusiastic about the European Bronze and Iron Ages, her research focusses on combining interdisciplinary approaches for insights into people’s lives, identities and social relations in prehistory. Her current research explores themes such as sex and gender, motherhood, kinship, mobility and migration through ERC and FWF-funded projects analyzing burial contexts and human remains from Central Europe.
Kuderna, L.F.K., Ulirsch, J.C., Rashid, S., Ameen, M., Sundaram, L., Hickey, G., Cox, A.J., Gao, H., Kumar, A., Aguet, F., Christmas, M.J., Clawson, H., Haeussler, M., Janiak, M.C., Kuhlwilm, M., Orkin, J.D., Bataillon, T., Manu, S., Valenzuela, A., Bergman, J., Rouselle, M., Silva, F.E., Agueda, L., Blanc, J., Gut, M., de Vries, D., Goodhead, I., Harris, R.A., Raveendran, M., Jensen, A., Chuma, I.S., Horvath, J.E., Hvilsom, C., Juan, D., Frandsen, P., Schraiber, J.G., de Melo, F.R., Bertuol, F., Byrne, H., Sampaio, I., Farias, I., Valsecchi, J., Messias, M., da Silva, M.N.F., Trivedi, M., Rossi, R., Hrbek, T., Andriaholinirina, N., Rabarivola, C.J., Zaramody, A., Jolly, C.J., Phillips-Conroy, J., Wilkerson, G., Abee, C., Simmons, J.H., Fernandez-Duque, E., Kanthaswamy, S., Shiferaw, F., Wu, D., Zhou, L., Shao, Y., Zhang, G., Keyyu, J.D., Knauf, S., Le, M.D., Lizano, E., Merker, S., Navarro, A., Nadler, T., Khor, C.C., Lee, J., Tan, P., Lim, W.K., Kitchener, A.C., Zinner, D., Gut, I., Melin, A.D., Guschanski, K., Schierup, M.H., Beck, R.M.D., Karakikes, I., Wang, K.C., Umapathy, G., Roos, C., Boubli, J.P., Siepel, A., Kundaje, A., Paten, B., Lindblad-Toh, K., Rogers, J., Marques Bonet, T., Farh, K.K.-H., 2023. Identification of constrained sequence elements across 239 primate genomes. Nature. read more
Abrams, G., Devièse, T., Pirson, S., De Groote, I., Flas, D., Jungels, C., Jadin, I., Cattelain, P., Bonjean, D., Mathys, A., Semal, P., Higham, T., Di Modica, K., 2024. Investigating the co-occurrence of Neanderthals and modern humans in Belgium through direct radiocarbon dating of bone implements. Journal of Human Evolution 186, 103471. read more
Horejs, B., Grasböck, S., Bratschi, T., Schwall, C., 2023. Çukuriçi Höyük 5: Stratigraphie und Architektur der frühen Bronzezeit. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. read more
Congratulations to VIAS-HEAS Member Mathias MEHOFER on being awarded a standalone EU-H2020-IPERION project titled “Hallmetals-Archaeometallurgical analyses on metals from the famous Iron Age cemetery of Hallstatt, Austria. The discovery of the famous cemetery of Hallstatt, Austria, with its rich and spectacular grave goods gave its name to an entire prehistoric culture – the Hallstatt culture (ca. 8th to the 4th cent. BC). These metal objects, which are nowadays housed in the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien (NHM), represent a remarkable and, to date unexplored, (archaeometallurgical) pool to examine the wide-ranging exchange connections of the prehistoric salt miners. As a first step, a set of 130 metals (gold and copper based objects) covering the time span of the 8th to the 4th century BC, will be examined for their chemical composition and metal provenance. For the first time, the generated archaeometallurgical database will allow for in-depth analyses of Iron Age metal exchange to the region over vast distances. Project partners: Priv.-Doz. Mag. Dr. Karina Grömer, Mag. Dr. Georg Tiefengraber, Mag. Daniel Oberndorfer, Conservator-Restorer, Prehistory, Natural History Museum Vienna Prof. Dr. Ernst Pernicka, CEZA Mannheim, Germany More information can be found on the following homepage
van der Sluis, L.G., Zazzo, A., Tombret, O., Thil, F., Pétillon, J.M., 2023. Testing The Use Of Xad Resin To Remove Synthetic Contamination From Archaeological Bone Prior To Radiocarbon Dating . Radiocarbon, 1-16. read more
Rybin, E.P., Belousova, N.E., Derevianko, A.P., Douka, K., Higham, T., 2023. The Initial Upper Paleolithic of the Altai: New radiocarbon determinations for the Kara-Bom site. Journal of Human Evolution 185, 103453. read more
Sawyer, S., Gelabert, P., Yakir, B., Lizcano, A.L., Sperduti, A., Bondioli, L., Cheronet, O., Neugebauer-Maresch, C., Teschler-Nicola, M., Novak, M., Pap, I., Szikossy, I., Hajdu, T., Meshorer, E., Carmel, L., Pinhasi, R., 2023. Improved detection of methylation in ancient DNA. bioRxiv, 2023.2010.2031.564722. read more
Doneus, M., Neubauer, W., Filzwieser, R., Sevara, C., 2022. Stratigraphy from topography II. The practical application of the Harris Matrix for the GIS-based spatio-temporal archaeological interpretation of topographical data. Archaeologia Austriaca. read more
I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Computational Admixture Genomics group. My primary interests are understanding the evolutionary history and the genetic background of species-specific traits of primates, in particular of chimpanzees and bonobos, the closest extant species of humans. I am using bioinformatics approaches, and am trying to investigate not only the host genomic materials but also pathogens and environmental context in this endeavor.
Roland Filzwieser, Michael Doneus, Gerhard Hasenhündl, Matthias Kucera, Andreas Lenzhofer, Michał Pisz, David Russ, Franz Seidl, Gerhard Stüttler, Geert Verhoeven, Georg Zotti und Wolfgang Neubauer. (2023): Der Dernberg. Neue Perspektiven auf einen mittelalterlichen Hausberg mit anschließender Ortswüstung durch integrierte archäologische Prospektion und die systematische Analyse historischer Karten. In: Beiträge zur Mittelalterarchäologie in Österreich 39, S. 115–136. read more
Wang Naihui, Xu Yang, Tang Zhuowei, He Cunding, Hu Xin, Cui Yinqiu and Douka Katerina 2023 Large-scale application of palaeoproteomics (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry; ZooMS) in two Palaeolithic faunal assemblages from ChinaProc. R. Soc. B.2902023112920231129 read more
Manning, J.T., Fink, B., Trivers, R., 2023. Digit Ratio (2D:4D; Right-Left 2D:4D) and Multiple Phenotypes for Same-Sex Attraction: The BBC Internet Study Revisited. Archives of Sexual Behavior. read more
Binder, M., Doneus, M., Klostermann, P., Özyurt, J., Strang, S., Tobias, B., & Fiedler, K. (2023). Das Gräberfeld von Obereggendorf (NÖ) – Erste interdisziplinäre Einblicke in eines der größten awarenzeitlichen Gräberfelder Ostösterreichs (The burial site of Obereggendorf (Lower Austria) – An initial interdisciplinary insight into one of the largest Avar cemeteries in Eastern Austria). Beiträge Zur Mittelalterarchäologie in Österreich, 39, 7–22. read more
Starting in October 2023, VIAS will host for the next three years the FWF ESPRIT project “Standardising portable X-ray fluorescence for archaeometry” led by early career researcher Michaela Schauer. Having recently completed her award-winning doctoral thesis on Linearband and La Hoguette pottery at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, she will now study p-XRF instruments and the specifics of their application to archaeological material with a focus on understanding the influence of different environmental conditions. An archaeologist by training, she has gained in-depth knowledge by applying this chemical analysis method mainly to pottery and soils in more than 30 projects over the past seven years. During this time she has encountered a wide range of unresolved issues relating to the equipment, its application to ancient ceramics, data processing and interpretation. Her research project focuses on experiments to improve our understanding of the former and to develop solutions to the latter, defining standards for the application of the method. Her results will be discussed within a network of experts who also contribute to the creation of appropriate training programmes for researchers and students interested in the method. She will introduce herself and her research in the HEAS Pecha Kucha Series in the upcoming weeks. Read more
