Throwback Thursday: Blast from the Past

The permanent ice of the high mountains of southern Norway is disappearing. As the ice fields fade archaeologists recover traces of the human past perfectly preserved within the ice. Ranging from the medieval period to the stone age, the unprecedented level of preservation and new types of artifacts retrieved give a new window in to the past. We can now tell a new history of the high mountains that until recently remained hidden.

We know that humans have changed landscapes profoundly since the Industrial Revolution, but this was not the beginning. The EcoArch ERC Synergy project seeks to understand the origins of human-induced changes to land cover and climate in Africa. In this talk, I will explain the process and challenges of doing this kind of fieldwork and how we arrive at understandings of how prehistoric people altered landscapes. We will see how we share more in common with our ancestors than previously thought.

Proteins can persist for millions of years, far beyond the preservation limits of ancient DNA. This, alongside their ubiquity and the information they reveal about their tissue and species of origin positions proteins as an unparalleled bioarchive for reconstructing past human lifeways and human interactions with the environment. In this talk, I will highlight the potential of protein-based analyses in both art conservation and archaeology, as well as insights from my own research.