Fields of Interest
- Impact of environmental and biomechanical stressors on the human skeleton
- Mobility patterns of past populations
- Diet reconstruction
- Palaeopathology
- Human Evolution
Curriculum vitae
2012-2015 BA Palaeolithic and Medieval Archaeology (major) and Palaeoanthropology (minor)
University of Tübingen
(Original title : BA Ur-und Frühgeschichtliche Archäologie und Archäologie des Mittelalters / Paläoanthropologie)
2015-2016 MPhil Human Evolutionary Studies
University of Cambridge
(Thesis title: Insights into a Pastoral Neolithic population from Ngorongoro Tanzania)
2016-2017 MSc Bioarchaeological and Forensic Anthropology
University College London
(Thesis title: Patterns of directional asymmetry in a postmedieval population from Chichester, UK)
2018- PhD Naturwissenschaftliche Archäologie
University of Tübingen
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Hervé Bocherens & Prof. Dr. Joachim Wahl
PhD Topic
Secular Trends in Living Conditions in Medieval/Post-medieval Luxembourg City
Reconstruction of living conditions of past populations from human skeletal remains constitutes one of the major research topics in the field of Biological Anthropology. Indeed, environmental stressors such as malnutrition, trauma, working conditions etc. can leave traces on the human skeleton, providing information on living conditions for each individual examined. This project aims to investigate, with palaeoanthropological approaches, secular changes in living standards through the analysis of ~400 stratified graves from the medieval/post-medieval Fransiscan cemetery on place Guillaume II in Luxembourg City. The analysis will focus primarely on the effects of environmental stressors on teeth as those are directly involved with dietary intake, but will also consider bone growth and development. Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen and Strontium Stable Isotope Ananlyses will be used to determine the dietary composition and geographical origin of a carefully selected sample of individuals from the cemetery. The results of this study will reveal how living standards evolved over time in a fortified medieval city and would allow to interpret anthropological findings in the light of recorded historical events, providing insight into how much these events shaped the life of the citizens. Furthermore, differences between rural and urban life will be explored through a comparison with the cemetery of Grevenmacher.
Fieldwork
2011 Olloy-sur-Viroin (Belgium) (proto-historic hill fort)
2012 Olloy-sur-Viroin (Belgium) (proto-historic hill fort)
2013 Grotte de la Verpillère 1 (Burgundy, France) (Palaeolithic excavation)
2014 Grotte de la Verpillère 2 (Burgundy, France) (Palaeolithic excavation)
2016 N’Gingolea (Turkana Basin, Kenya) (Palaeolithic & Palaeoanthropological excavation and survey)
Work Experience
2011-2014 Student job at the MNHA (National Museum of History and Art) in Luxembourg
2017- Contract by the CNRA (Centre National de Recherche Archéologique) as freelance anthropologist for cleaning and preparing the human remains from the medieval/post-medieval cemetery from Place Guillaume II, Luxembourg
Publications
Münzel S., Wolf S., Achtelik M., Arlt S., Becher J., Brunke L., Klett J., Kremmer A., Krönke J., Langer A., Litzenberg R., Loy A-K., Mandt A-F., Mena J. A., Ochs U., Rebentisch A., Schürch B., Taipale N., Wegeng H., Wiedmann H., Würschem H., Zahoransky T., Zerrer M., Krönneck P., (2015) Chaîne opératoire of Molly, an Indian elephant from the Wilhelmina in Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: results of a workshop in Blaubeuren on the processing of Proboscidian ribs as raw material for tools. Poster presented at the 57th Annual Meeting of Hugo Obermaier Society, Heidenheim, Germany.
Language proficiency
Luxembourgish – native speaker
German – excellent
French – excellent
English – excellent
Scholarships
AFR Individual PhD grant by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR)
UCL Master’s thesis abstract
Patterns of directional asymmetry in a post-medieval population from Chichester, UK
Despite the human’s mostly symmetrical body, deviations from that symmetry can occur either during development and growth or even in adult life. Asymmetries that occur during growth and adult life are most likely caused by environmental factors and are called directional asymmetries. Therefore, directional asymmetries can yield information on the amount of mechanical load a body has been exposed to, but cannot be used to reconstruct specific activities. This thesis aimed at determining the patterns of asymmetry in a post-medieval population from Chichester UK by examining several measurements on the humerus, femur and tibia. The results showed that, although the majority of the measurements exhibited some significant degree of directional asymmetry in the pooled sample, asymmetries were generally not pronounced and no differences, except for humeral length, which was more asymmetrical in females, were detected between the sexes, social classes, age groups or rural and urban populations. This general lack of differences in asymmetry within the population of Chichester and in comparison to urban populations suggests that living- and working conditions had changed during the post-medieval period in Britain among the sexes and social classes, probably due to the industrialisation and the subsequent decrease in need for manual labour.