On Wednesday, May 14, 2025, the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest (ICUB), in collaboration with the “Vasile Pârvan” Institute of Archaeology, Bucharest (IAB), invites you to the 41st ArchaeoSciences seminar.
This edition’s guest speaker is Dr. Estelle Herrscher from Aix-Marseille Université (France), who will present a lecture titled: “Feeding the Past: Unraveling the Diets of Ancient Caucasian Societies. Anthropological and Biogeochemical Perspectives in an Integrative Framework.”
The seminar will take place from 11:00 to 13:30 (EET), at the Administrative Building within the “Dimitrie Brândză” Botanical Garden (Șoseaua Cotroceni 32, Bucharest, room P03, ground floor).
Dr. Estelle Herrscher is a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and a member of the Mediterranean Laboratory of Prehistory Europe Africa (LAMPEA) in Aix-en-Provence. A bioanthropologist by training, she is specialized in diachronic dietary studies in both insular and continental environments. Her work explores how natural and economic settings—as well as socio-cultural factors such as tradition, social status, technological and medical advances, or economic events—shape dietary practices over time.
Dr. Herrscher holds a master’s degree in anthropology, bioarchaeology, and prehistory. She completed her PhD in 2001 at the French National Museum of Natural History, focusing on the diet and health of medieval populations based on skeletal remains from the Saint-Laurent Archaeological Museum.
Her research adopts an archaeometric approach using isotopic analyses of bones and teeth from excavated funerary contexts. These methods provide insights into human adaptation to the environment and the influence of social and cultural factors on food choices.
Her study of dietary practices spans contrasting environments from the Neolithic period (5000 years ago) to the Iron Age (1000 years ago). While her early work focused on historical-period diets, she is now expanding her research in two major geographic regions:
- an insular context, centered on the Lapita colonization of the Pacific (ca. 3,000 years ago), and
- a continental context, in the South Caucasus, from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age.
With support from the French National Research Agency (ANR), she led a multidisciplinary project on the origins of millet cultivation and consumption in the South Caucasus.
These seminars are an original initiative of the ArchaeoSciences Platform (ASp) at ICUB, which aims to provide an open space for professionals in archaeological sciences worldwide to share knowledge and engage with the latest methodological and theoretical advances in the study of the past. They also offer Romanian students a valuable opportunity to discover the interdisciplinary dimensions of archaeology and archaeosciences.
SECŢIUNE ACCESIBILIZATĂ PENTRU PERSOANELE CU DIZABILITĂŢI DE VEDERE
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