News

NHM Vienna Archaeologists Discover Earlier Traces of Settlements of Early Farming Communities in Hallstatt

5. August 2025

During excavation work in Hallstatt (on the property of the Kocsar-Riezinger family in the Seestraße), archaeological layers of scientific importance…

HEAS Member Discusses Tischoferhöhle on Austrian National Television

29. Juli 2025

Mareike Stahlschmidt, Susanna Sawyer and Omaima Zaki from the working group microarchaeology visited the Tischoferhöhle to sample for ancient sedaDNA…

HEAS Seed Grants June 2025 Round

24. Juli 2025

We are delighted to announce the results of the June 2025 Seed Grants: They are: Time is of the…

International Mountain Conference (IMC) taking place in Innsbruck in September 2025

9. Juli 2025

The program for the International Mountain Conference (IMC), taking place in Innsbruck from September 14–18, 2025, is now available online.…

New Publication by HEAS Member Offers New Insights into Ancient Roman Settlement Patterns in Austria

2. Juli 2025

Dominik Hagmann’s latest research, „Home is Where my Villa Is: A Machine Learning-based Predictive Suitability Map for Roman Features in…

HEAS Keynote with Necmi Karul Takes Place in Vienna

1. Juli 20251. Juli 2025

The HEAS Keynote with Necmi Karul took place on the 26th June 2025 at the ÖAW Theatersaal in the first…

HEAS Members Publish Nature Communications Article with HEAS Speaker

30. Juni 2025

In the article recently published in Nature Communications, the team looked at the dynamics of Late Neolithic and Copper Age…

HEAS Member Awarded GO.INVESTIGATIO Fellowship by the Austrian Academy of Sciences

11. Juni 202511. Juni 2025

HEAS Member Doris Jetzinger has recently been awarded a grant by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. I have been awarded…

HEAS Member Gerhard Weber Featured on Podcast

22. April 202522. April 2025

HEAS Member Gerhard Weber was recently interviewed for a popular german language podcast on, among other things, the origin of…

Exploring Ancient Foodways - An archaeological journey into Roman dietary habits at Kinderuni Wien 2025

17. Juli 2025

By: Dominik Hagmann and Nisa Kirchengast On Monday, July 7th, we had the delightful opportunity to dive into the fascinating world of Roman cuisine with a group of 50 young explorers at Kinderuni Wien. The session, titled „Römisches Essen: Alles [...]

Article

Round 2 of Geoarchaeology in Vienna: Pushing Borders – Expanding Horizons

13. März 2025

Authors: Valentina Laaha, Thomas Beard, Doris Jetzinger, and Doralice Klainscek From the 12th to the 14th of February 2025, the second edition of the ‘Geoarchaeology in Vienna’ workshop took place at the University of Vienna. It was generously funded [...]

Article

HEAS WELCOMES OUR FIRST JUNIOR INTERN DR BHAVNA AHLAWAT

28. November 2024

Bhavna Ahlawat is our first Junior Intern and is visiting HEAS currently working on exciting new research concerned with biomolecules from ancient Indian sites. I am a molecular biologist specializing in ancient DNA and population genetics, focusing on different archaeological [...]

Article

HEAS Excursion to Hallstatt’s Prehistoric Salt Mine: A Journey Through Time

7. Oktober 2024

On Friday, October 4th, 2024, 17 members of the Human Evolution and Archaeological Science (HEAS) research network from the University of Vienna set off for a remarkable two-day excursion to Hallstatt, a UNESCO World Heritage Site famous for its prehistoric [...]

Article

Roman Cuisine: A Vegan and Organic Feast? Our Kinderuni Session on Ancient Diets

26. Juli 2024

Authors: Dominik Hagmann and Nisa Iduna Kirchengast Description: In this blog post, we, Dominik and Nisa, reflect on our Kinderuni session „Römisches Essen: alles bio und vegan? Mit der Archäologie der antiken Ernährung auf der Spur“ (Roman Food: All Organic [...]

Article

The first 'Geoarchaeology in Vienna' Workshop

4. April 2024

Authors: Thomas Beard, Valentina Laaha, Doris Jetzinger At the beginning of this year, from the 11th to the 12th of January 2024, the first ‘Geoarchaeology in Vienna’ workshop took place at the University of Vienna, generously funded by HEAS. [...]

A Bell Beaker workshop in Vienna

20. April 2023

Blog post by Eve Derenne and Karina Grömer On March 21, 2023, members of two partner institutions from the HEAS network — the Vienna Institute for Archaeological Science and the Natural History Museum Vienna — co-organised a workshop titled ‘Interweaving [...]

Ancient Textile Production from an Interdisciplinary Approach: Humanities and Natural Sciences Interwoven for our Understanding of Textiles. By Karina Grömer

14. Dezember 2022

For decades, textile remains from archaeological contexts have come more and more into the focus of archaeological research. Recently, the book Ancient Textile Production from an Interdisciplinary Approach: Humanities and Natural Sciences Interwoven for our Understanding of Textiles, edited by [...]

Review of the 10th Radiocarbon & Archaeology Conference (Zürich, 11-14th September). T. Higham

11. Juli 2022

The 10th Radiocarbon and Archaeology conference was held at the ETH Zürich (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich), in parallel with the 24th Radiocarbon conference. The meeting got underway on Sunday 11/09, with a series of workshops at the Hönggerberg ETH [...]

Temporal dynamics of woolly mammoth genome erosion prior to extinction

Dehasque, M., Morales, H.E., Díez-del-Molino, D., Pečnerová, P., Chacón-Duque, J.C., Kanellidou, F., Muller, H., Plotnikov, V., Protopopov, A., Tikhonov, A., Nikolskiy, P., Danilov, G.K., Giannì, M., van der Sluis, L., Higham, T., Heintzman, P.D., Oskolkov, N., Gilbert, M.T.P., Götherström, A., van der Valk, T., Vartanyan, S., Dalén, L., 2024. Temporal dynamics of woolly mammoth genome erosion prior to extinction. Cell 187, 3531-3540.e3513. read more

Exploring the Surrounding of a Gravettian Site. The Case Study Grub-Kranawetberg, Austria

Nigst, P.R., Antl-Weiser, W., Bosch, M.D., 2024. Exploring the Surrounding of a Gravettian Site. The Case Study Grub-Kranawetberg, Austria. Archaeologia Austriaca 108. read more

When is a handaxe a planned-axe? exploring morphological variability in the Acheulean

Clark, J., Shipton, C., Moncel, M.-H., Nigst, P.R., Foley, R.A., 2024. When is a handaxe a planned-axe? exploring morphological variability in the Acheulean. PloS one 19, e0307081. read more

Male facial cues to physical strength in Europe: Medium‐strength preference and higher aggressiveness attribution to the weakest.

Schaefer, K., Seiser, V.M., Prucha, S., Kerschbaumer, V., Fink, B., Windhager, S., 2024. Male facial cues to physical strength in Europe: Medium‐strength preference and higher aggressiveness attribution to the weakest. American journal of human biology, e24040. read more

Investigating the effects of prenatal testosterone exposure (via 2D: 4D) and socio-relational factors on 3–6-year-old preschoolers' prosocial choices.

Horn, L., Windhager, S., Juricka, N., Bugnyar, T., Massen, J.J., Markova, G., 2024. Investigating the effects of prenatal testosterone exposure (via 2D: 4D) and socio-relational factors on 3–6-year-old preschoolers' prosocial choices. Early Human Development, 106055. read more

Early developmental masculinization among boys: More prenatal testosterone action (assessed via 2D: 4D) renders their faces perceived as masculine but not pretty or cute.

Schaefer, K., Seidl-Berger, A., Windhager, S., 2024. Early developmental masculinization among boys: More prenatal testosterone action (assessed via 2D: 4D) renders their faces perceived as masculine but not pretty or cute. Early Human Development, 106071. read more

Archaeology meets environmental genomics: implementing sedaDNA in the study of the human past.

Özdoğan, K.T., Gelabert, P., Hammers, N., Altınışık, N.E., de Groot, A., Plets, G., 2024. Archaeology meets environmental genomics: implementing sedaDNA in the study of the human past. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 16, 108. read more

Homo sapiens reached the higher latitudes of Europe by 45,000 years ago

Mylopotamitaki, D., Weiss, M., Fewlass, H., Zavala, E.I., Rougier, H., Sümer, A.P., Hajdinjak, M., Smith, G.M., Ruebens, K., Sinet-Mathiot, V., Pederzani, S., Essel, E., Harking, F.S., Xia, H., Hansen, J., Kirchner, A., Lauer, T., Stahlschmidt, M., Hein, M., Talamo, S., Wacker, L., Meller, H., Dietl, H., Orschiedt, J., Olsen, J.V., Zeberg, H., Prüfer, K., Krause, J., Meyer, M., Welker, F., McPherron, S.P., Schüler, T., Hublin, J.-J., 2024. Homo sapiens reached the higher latitudes of Europe by 45,000 years ago. Nature 626, 341-346. read more

Sediment DNA can revolutionize archaeology—if it is used the right way

Aldeias, V., Stahlschmidt, M.C., 2024. Sediment DNA can revolutionize archaeology—if it is used the right way. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121, e2317042121. read more

Double feature: First genetic evidence of a mother-daughter double burial in Roman period Austria

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

Grinding and Ancient Lab

VERA

Virtual Anthropology and Geometric Morphometrics

Palaeoproteomics Laboratory

Genetic data used in computational genomics

Sample tubes for Zooms

Exploring shape patterns of facial form. Windhager et al. 2019

Looking at Lithics

Excavation at Denisova Cave

Osteology

Neolithic building floor plans

Publications

Human Evolution and Archaeological Sciences (HEAS)