Robert leads the Evolution of Dietary Diversity and the Transition to Agriculture in Europe Project. He is also a research fellow at the UCD School of Archaeology and an associate member of the Earth Institute. Previously, he worked at the Max Planck for Evolutionary Anthropology and at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He specialises in studying microbotanical remains in dental calculus and sediments to understand ancient diets.
Meriel is an associate professor at UCD School of Archaeology, a member of the Earth Institute and director of the UCD Ancient Foods Research Group, and Founder and Director of UCD Archaeobotany Laboratory..
Prof. Cynthianne Spiteri
Project Partner
cynthianne.spiteri(at)unito.it
Cynthianne is a researcher at the Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology at the University of Turin and Assistant Head of Research, Archaeology and Conservation in Malta.
Meaghan Mackie
PhD student
meaghan.mackie(at)ucdconnect.ie
Prof. Beatrice Demarchi
Project partner
beatrice.demarchi(at)unito.it
Dr. Stephen Buckley
Project Partner
sb55(at)york.ac.uk
Dr. Stephen Buckley is a Research Fellow in Biomolecular Archaeology at the University of York, UK. Having studied the materials employed in mummification across four continents, from the iconic mummies of ancient Egypt to the mummies of Peru, he has been an archaeological chemist for excavations in the Valley of the Kings since 1993. His PhD was on the embalming materials used in ancient Egyptian mummification. ’.
He has pioneered a new and highly specialised area of research on the chemical analysis of dental calculus (tartar), with his collaborator Karen Hardy, to reveal major insights into ancient diets and environments, from Victorian period individuals to a 1.2 million year-old hominin, and recognised in ‘Archaeology’ magazine’s ‘Top 10 Discoveries’ in 2012 for findings on the ingestion of medicinal plants by Neanderthals. Continuing his research on dental calculus, he has been part of the ERC project: ‘FoodTransforms’, before joining the Power Plants project and publishing with Karen in ‘Nature Communications’ on ‘The human consumption of seaweed and freshwater aquatic plants in ancient Europe’.
Prof. Domingo Carlos Salazar Garcia
Project Partner
domingocarlos.Salazar(at)uv.es
Domingo is a research professor at the Departament de Prehistòria, Arqueologia i Història Antiga at the Universitat de València. He is also an Honorary Research Affiliate with the Department of Geological Sciences, at the University of Cape Town.
Universitat de València page
Glenn Gibney
Project Partner
Archaeological Consultancy Services page
glenn(at)acsu.ie
Glenn holds an M.A. in Human Osteoarchaeology from University College Cork. He works as a commercial osteoarchaeologist and senior archaeologist for Archaeological Consultancy Services Unit (ACSU). He is a member of the Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland and is Secretary of the Irish Association of Professional Osteoarchaeologists. He recently published the results of an excavation of a Late Iron Age/Early Medieval cemetery in Kildare, Co. Kildare (JKAS Vol. XXIV, 2023).