Activities

Dominik Hagmann's latest research, "Home is Where my Villa Is: A Machine Learning-based Predictive Suitability Map for Roman Features in Northern Noricum (ca. 50–500 CE/Lower Austria/AUT)," was recently published in the Journal of Maps. The study applies the Maxent machine learning (ML) algorithm to identify suitable locations for Roman archaeological features in Lower Austria. It offers new insights into ancient Roman settlement patterns and provides valuable support for heritage management and archaeological research.   https://www.heas.at/research/publications/home-is-where-my-villa-is-a-machine-learning-based-predictive-suitability-map-for-roman-features-in-northern-noricum-ca-50-500-ce-lower-austria-aut/

The HEAS Keynote with Necmi Karul took place on the 26th June 2025 at the ÖAW Theatersaal in the first district of Vienna. The talk, titled 'The Land of Great Transformation. Karahantepe and The Last Hunter-Gatherers of The Şanliurfa Plateau' was delivered to a hybrid audience and was followed by the HEAS Summer Party.   Press Coverage (in German) https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000275682/oesterreichische-archaeologieteams-werden-an-monumentaler-grabungsstaette-goebekli-tepe-mitarbeiten

In the article recently published in Nature Communications, the team looked at the dynamics of Late Neolithic and Copper Age (4,800-3,900 BCE) Carpathian populations. The study revealed that, despite contemporaneity and geographical proximity, individual communities can display very different patterns. The site of Tiszapolgár-Basatanya (present-day Hungary) was represented by numerous, close familial relationships with high levels of consanguinity, whereas the cemetery of Urziceni-Vamă (present-day Romania), located only about 100 km away, was represented by a genetically diverse population, with indications of a matrilocal society.   https://www.heas.at/research/publications/ancient-dna-reveals-diverse-community-organizations-in-the-5th-millennium-bce-carpathian-basin/     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl0eefznpyw&t=4s

HEAS Member Doris Jetzinger has recently been awarded a grant by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. I have been awarded a GO.INVESTIGATIO fellowship by the Austrian Academy of Sciences for a 6 months research stay at CERSA luminescence, the luminescence laboratories within the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, for my research project “How old are these sediments? Promoting the use of pOSL profiling for archaeological features with unclear chronological contexts in Austria”. My aim is to study chronostratigraphic contexts, construction histories and (post-) depositional and formation processes of Austrian archaeological sites and features via portable optically stimulated luminescence profiling (pOSL profiling) and OSL dating of sediment samples. pOSL profiling generates relative chronostratigraphic data through stratigraphies as well as proxy data to interpret geomorphic contexts, formation processes, and variations in mineralogy. My project acts as a case study that will lay the groundwork for a larger research project and helps underline the potential of pOSL profiling and the benefits of further establishing this approach for archaeological applications in Austria.

HEAS Member Gerhard Weber was recently interviewed for a popular german language podcast on, among other things, the origin of the human species and the development of the human brain over the course of evolution. Is our brain getting bigger? Are we on the verge of a leap in our biological evolution? You can listen to the podcast on the following links: www.dguz.at Podigee-Blog: https://dguz.podigee.io/ Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/0fn6MzZ9RdGWK8HOH8UaSj?si=0c55549b32094eee Apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/at/podcast/die-geschichte-unserer-zukunft/id1800278307?i=1000703155950

HEAS members Philip R. Nigst and Marjolein D. Bosch published new paper on Fire Use during the Last Glacial Maximum at Korman' 9, Ukraine We are very pleased to announce our latest publication on our research on fire use and combustion activties during the Last Glacial Maximum in collaboration with William Chase Murphree, University of Algrave (Faro, Portugal). We analysed three combustion features at the Epigravettian site of Korman' 9 in the Middle Dnister valley, Ukraine. Our paper was published in Geoarchaeology. Open-access. The Last Glacial maximum (LGM), spanning from 26.5 to 19 thousand years before present (ka BP), is a period of extreme climatic degradation associated with reduced biomass production and resource stress throughout Eurasia. Arguably, one of the most fundamental tools for human survival during this cold and arid period was the ability to create, maintain and use fire. While fire is widely considered a ubiquitous tool in modern human behaviour, there are surprisingly few well‐described combustion features during the LGM in Europe. In this paper, we provide high‐resolution geoarchaeological research into three combustion features associated with Epigravettian occupations at the site of Korman' 9 (Ukraine) with ages falling in the LGM. Our results show distinct variations in the size and structure of the combustion features, potentially indicating multiple occupations within the same layer or reflect differences in…

HEAS deputy head Ron Pinhasi, has been awarded an FWF grant for his project on Geochemical ENhancEment of Ancient DNA from SedImentS along with Stephan Kraemer, Richard Kimber and Benjamin Vernot.   More information here.

We are delighted to announce the results of the HEAS Seed Grants February 2025 round.   They are: AI-Assisted Full-Spectrum p-XRF Analysis: A New Approach to Decoding Graphite Provenance Michaela Schauer and Georg Tiefengraber Refining dentine extraction methods for detecting metabolites indicative of tobacco use in archaeological teeth Leslie Quade, Laura van der Sluis , Manasij Pal Chowdhury,  Thomas Köcher Genetic Excavation of Pathogens: Insights from the Bürgerspital Cesspit (17th-18th Century Vienna) Sojung Han, Ron Pinhasi,  Andreas G. Heiss More information on the HEAS Seed Grants can be found here: https://www.heas.at/research/seed-grants/    

We were very happy to welcome a group of early career researchers from the OeAW from the HEAS Partner Insitute the ÖAW to the University of Vienna Biology building (the UBB). The group had a tour of the UBB followed by a tour of the Vienna Micro-CT Lab by Gerhard Weber, a tour of the Higham and Douka labs by Tom Higham and of the Pinhasi Lab by Olivia Cheronet. We were happy to have such an enthuastic group visit us and we hope to have a lot more fruitful meetings in the future.    

HEAS Member Magdalena Blanz (Vienna Institute for Archaeological Science and Austrian Archaeological Institute) was awarded an FWF Erwin Schrödinger grant to study compound-specific stable isotope ratios in bone collagen and plants for improved dietary modelling. FWF Erwin Schrödinger grants are awarded to highly qualified early-career postdocs to pursue career-enhancing stays at internationally renowned research institutions, and also provides them with support after their return to Austria.   Amino acid isotope ratios to explore past plant consumption Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N) of bone collagen are frequently used to reconstruct past diets. However, bulk analyses of all extracted collagen suffer greatly from equifinality, whereby very different diets can result in the same bulk δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values. By separating collagen (a protein) into its constituent amino acids, and separately analysing the δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values of specific amino acids, much more nuanced palaeodietary information can be gained. In her Schrödinger project, Magdalena Blanz will be hosted at the University of Oxford, working with Prof. Amy Styring (Head of the Stable Isotope Ratio Laboratory) to gain more information has to how amino acid δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values reflect past diets. On her return to Vienna, she will be working at the Vienna Institute for Archaeological Science in collaboration with Univ.-Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wanek.   Magdalena Blanz obtained a…

HEAS members Ron Pinhasi and Olivia Cheronet et al. published a paper in Nature on High continuity of forager ancestry in the Neolithic period of the eastern Maghreb. The study published in Nature and co-led by Ron Pinhasi, University of Vienna, David Reich and Mark Lipson, Harvard Medical School, Alfredo Coppa, Sapienza University of Rome, and Giulio Lucarini, National Research Council of Italy, analyzed genome-wide data for nine individuals from the Later Stone Age through the Neolithic period from the eastern Maghreb (Algeria and Tunisia). Their results challenge the assumption that the region was merely a passive recipient of Neolithic influences - instead, they identified a striking pattern of continuity. Read More   https://www.heas.at/research/publications/high-continuity-of-forager-ancestry-in-the-neolithic-period-of-the-eastern-maghreb/

In a new study in Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology, HEAS member Philip R. Nigst together with an international team, presents on their fieldwork and laboratory research at Ollersdorf-Heidenberg, an Upper Palaeolithic open-air site in Lower Austria. The site was dated to the time leading up to the Last Glacial Maximum. The Middle Danube region is a key area for understanding Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer behaviours in a climatic context due to its long loess–palaeosol sequences and rich archaeological record spanning from the onset of the Upper Palaeolithic to the Last Glacial Maximum and beyond. Recently, new approaches focusing on high-resolution studies of the stratigraphy, geoarchaeological studies at microscopic scale and investigations of organic matter at molecular scale (biomarker analyses) have shown great new insights in human behaviour. Many sites in the Middle Danube region have been excavated a long time ago without opportunity to apply such approaches. The aim of this paper is to introduce Ollersdorf-Heidenberg, a loess open-air site. The site is located ~ 26 km northeast of Vienna close to the Morava River valley and preserves several Upper Palaeolithic archaeological horizons. The site has been known since a pipeline construction in 1998. Here, we report the first results of new research at the site including new excavations in two trenches. We describe and analyse the stratigraphy, present a first radiocarbon date,…

HEAS member Gerhard Weber starts a new FWF Project to study the 3D morphology of human postcanine teeth. Petra Simkova will be employed as PostDoc, Jana Pfneiszl will start a PhD in the project. In this project we undertake the first comprehensive 3D study of human teeth, more precisely of the tooth crowns of canines, premolars, and molars from the upper and lower dentition. We will also include milk teeth. Despite the long history of dental research in anthropology and medicine, progress in studying the three-dimensional geometry of teeth has only been made recently. How the 3D shape and size of individual tooth types are related to each other, how they vary between different human populations, and which individual regions of these teeth show more or less variation remains largely unknown. This project fills the gaps in our knowledge on human dental anatomy, provides comparable data, and lays the foundations for future work to unravel the associations between teeth and genes. We have defined four major aims: 1) Investigate the 3D shape and size variation of the upper and lower dentition in a geographically diverse sample of modern humans, 2) study the shape variation in different tooth regions, namely those regions that touch each other during chewing and those which do not touch, 3) examine the 3D shape relationships between…

Organisation: Dr. Ing. Mathias Mehofer, VIAS, University Vienna In the year 2004 the scanning electron microscopy laboratory was funded at the Vienna Institute for Archaeological Science, University of Vienna. Initiated within the FWF project (P 16489) "The Gold Treasure from Sannicolau Mare (Nagyszentmiklós)" under the direction of Gen. Dir. Prof. Dr. F. Daim, it was used to conduct technological and material analysis of this outstanding early medieval gold treasure, which is nowadays housed in the Antikensammlung, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna (KHM). The scanning electron microscope played a pivotal role in this work and has since been utilized in many other research projects addressing various scientific questions. Anorganic and organic materials of all kind were analysed, contributing to archaeometric research and numerous publications. The planned anniversary event on November 14, 2024 aims to reflect on the scientific activities of the past 20 years and present outstanding research results. We warmly invite you to join us in celebrating this anniversary. Where: Department of Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology University Vienna Franz Klein Gasse 1/3rd floor 1190 Vienna lecture room 7 (HS7) When: 14.11.2024, 15-17 pm, followed by a get-together with a buffet and good vine.   We kindly ask you to register by 07.11.2024 at mathias.mehofer@univie.ac.at Jubiläum_20_Jahre-REM_VIAS_Universität_Wien_  

In a new study in Current Biology, HEAS members So Jung Han and Martin Kuhlwilm together with an international team, improve our understanding of bonobos. Bonobos are, together with chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, but the genetic structure of their population was so far not well understood. They show that three genetically distinct bonobo groups of inferred Central, Western and Far-Western geographic origin exist within the bonobo range. Their split times are up to ~145,000 years ago, which similar to that of some chimpanzee subspecies. This highlights the need of attention to bonobo substructure, which is fundamental both to understand their evolutionary past and preserve their future. https://www.heas.at/research/publications/deep-genetic-substructure-within-bonobos/ Press Release (In German)   More information

Caves have long served as critical habitats for both humans and carnivores during the Pleistocene. Traditionally, research has focused primarily on humans, often overlooking the role of carnivores in these ecosystems. Additionally, carnivores are frequently absent from the archaeological record as their activities may not leave behind remains indicating they perished in caves. Pere Gelabert’s SHADOWS project aims to broaden our understanding of how these carnivores coexisted with humans, competed for resources, and ultimately faced extinction. The project will utilize advanced techniques such as high spatiotemporal precision sampling for sediment DNA and paleoproteomics. This research will enhance our knowledge of the biological processes leading to extinction and offer crucial insights for the protection of critically endangered species today. The team will generate comprehensive data on these species, particularly focusing on their later occurrences, to detail the process of genetic erosion. Additionally, the team will develop models to better explain carnivore-human interactions and co-evolutionary patterns, aspects that are essential for understanding Paleolithic societies Pere Gelabert is a biologist who earned his PhD in Biomedicine from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, in 2018. Since 2019, he has been conducting research as a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology of the University of Vienna. He has established himself as an author of several publications in the field of paleogenomics. In…

HEAS Member Katerina Douka was recently interviewed by 'Die Presse' on her work identifying previously unclassified tooth and bone samples and her methods for decontaminating archaeological material.   "Just two decades ago, people had a fairly simple picture of why modern humans were the only ones of the Homo genus to survive." This picture was based on theories about hunting techniques and tools and fed the idea of ​​superior modern humans who conquered the world victoriously. "But that's not how it happened." We have known that there were other forms of humans since the discovery of the first Neanderthal skull - recognized as such - in 1856, three years before Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species."   Read full article (in German) below: https://www.diepresse.com/18905736/die-geschichte-der-menschheit-muss-umgeschrieben-werden Douka_Die_Presse_Die Geschichte der Menschheit muss umgeschrieben werden _ DiePresse.com_compressed dp.dp_die_presse.28_09_2024

A new study by HEAS members Nicole Grunstra, Philipp Mitteroecker and Anne Le Maître, published in Nature Communications, showed clear evidence of convergent evolution over phylogenetic signal in the inner ear of mammals. The shape of the bony labyrinth - the osseous moulding of the inner ear - remains intensively studied in humans and extinct hominins in order to study adaptation and phylogenetic relationships. This macroevolutionary study of different evolutionary signals in the mammalian inner ear provides a relevant evolutionary context for human inner ear variation.   https://www.heas.at/research/publications/convergent-evolution-in-afrotheria-and-non-afrotherians-demonstrates-high-evolvability-of-the-mammalian-inner-ear/ [caption id="attachment_3905" align="alignnone" width="300"] credit: Nikolay Usik[/caption]