Dr. Ian Scharlotta awarded Postdoctoral position at LAMPEA to investigate variation in prehistoric hunter-gatherer behaviour
January 1, 2016
Congratulations to Dr. Ian Scharlotta, former BHAP PhD student, who was recently awarded a 2-year Postdoctoral position at Laboratoire Mediterranéen de Préhistoire Europe Afrique (LAMPEA) to investigate variation in prehistoric hunter-gatherer behaviour. More specifically, the focus of the position is to examine archaeological materials from middle Holocene hunter-gatherer groups from the Lake Baikal region in Siberia, Russia as part of the BHAP directed by Dr. Andrzej Weber.
Ian will be integrating some of the latest microsampling techniques to recover dietary isotopic information using tooth roots excavated from sites Shamanka and Lokomotiv on Lake Baikal. He will be looking at a combination of individual dietary variation and weaning patterning as a result of this type of microsampling. It will augment the work that Ian did while at the University of Alberta and that Dr. Weber has been focusing on more in the last few years with dietary reconstructions.
Methods that Ian will be using are illustrated by Figures 2 and 5 below from "Estimating weaning and early childhood diet from serial micro-samples of dentin collagen" by Jelmer W. Eerkens, Ada G. Berget and Eric J. Bartelink in Journal of Archaeological Science 38 (2011) 3101-3111.
Fig. 2. Example of sampling strategy, with ten serial samples from root tip (A) to crown (J). Dentin in white, with approximate angles of growth lines.
Fig. 5. Models of weaning and resulting sampling curves.
Congratulations on your new position, Dr. Scharlotta!