Lacey Fleming

My Ph.D. research, supervised by Dr. Robert Losey, focuses on the study of the roles dogs fulfilled in prehistoric and Medieval societies across Siberia- including their use as traction animals, pets, subjects of ceremonial sacrifice, and even as a source of food-through stable isotope analyses. 13C and 15N remain in bone collagen long after animals have died, and, as stable isotopes of naturally occurring elements, are resistant to decay. Bone collagen, and the stable isotopes it contains, provides an ideal means for examining both human and animal diets in the past. I am interested particularly in the possibility that different dog roles may be reflected through the isotopic study of their diets, whether dogs' dietary stable isotope values can be used as a proxy for human dietary values, and if local ecology had implications for human-dog relationships in the past.

My M.A. research, supervised by Dr. Rob Losey, focused on avian skeletal remains recovered from several prehistoric cemeteries in the South Baikal and Angara River Valley regions of Siberia. I assessed the type and frequency of these materials, as well as the specific contexts in which they occur. My ultimate goal was to explore culturally relevant conceptions of age, gender, death, and human-bird relationships among the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age peoples of South Baikal and the Angara River Valley.