Staff

PD Dr. Simone Riehl

Simone Riehl is currently responsible for the archaeobotanical work group at the Institute for Archaeological Science. She studied early prehistory, geology, botany, archaeobotany and climatology at the Universities of Basel, Tübingen, Sheffield and Madison-Wisconsin. Her teaching covers archaeobotany and environmental archaeology. She is project archaeobotanist in several archaeological excavations in the Near East, including Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Iran. Simone‘s main areas of research include: palaeoethnobotany the emergence and development of agriculture, palaeoecology and environmental archaeology of the Middle East, ostracods as palaeoenvironmental indicators, palaeoclimate models in archaeology, stable carbon isotopes as palaeoclimate proxies. More...

PD Dr. Katleen Deckers

Katleen Deckers is researcher and private docent at the Institute for Archaeological Science. Katleen studied archaeology at the University of Leuven and proceeded with a PhD on Cypriot geoarchaeology at the University of Edinburgh. Katleen is specialized in a wide range of methodologies, including charcoal analysis, dendro-climatology, dendro-isotopy, geoarchaeology, remote sensing, Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis, and thermoluminescence screening. Armed with these methods, she has been successful in answering specific questions concerning the interactions between humans and their environment in the Near East. She is currently Vice-president of the ―Gesellschaft of Naturwissenschaftliche Archäologie. Her teaching at Tübingen covers geoarchaeology and anthracology for MSc candidates. More...

PD Dr. Elena-Marinova-Wolff

Elena Marinova-Wolff is senior researcher at the Center for Archaeological Sciences at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and private docent at the Institute for Archaeological Science in Tübingen. Until 2007 she has been Assistant Professor at the Laboratory of Palynology, department of Botany at Sofia University, Bulgaria.

Her research experience covers past vegetation and climate in the mountain areas of Bulgaria, archaeobotanical studies of several prehistoric sites – as evidence for the Neolithisation processes in the modern territory of Bulgaria, plant macrofossil records from lakes and peat bogs in Bulgarian Mountains in relation to reconstruction of natural and anthropogenic vegetation developments in the Holocene. More recently her focus has been on agricultural development in Turkish, Syrian and Egyptian prehistoric and historic landscapes (Troia: 2004, 2006, Sagalassos 2007- 2013), Syria (Tell Tweini 2008) and Egypt (Dayr-al-Bascha, spring 2007-2014, Tell El Iswid 2013-2014). At Tübingen Elena teaches students in archaeobotany and palynology. More...

Dr. Michelle Winifred de Gruchy

Michelle de Gruchy earned her PhD at the University of Durham and is creating an archaeology of routes through the development of new quantitative methods and the bringing together of useful theory from the broader field of route studies encompassing socio-cultural anthropology, neuroscience, animal behavioural science, mathematics. Another, related, area of intense interest is the classic question: What is Human Nature? Routes are the direct evidence and trace fossils of past interaction and, as such, have enormous untapped potential for understanding past cultures. Her present geographic and temporal focus is Late Prehistory in the Near and Middle East, but she has been known to run off to Central Asia. Michelle is at Tübingen as a Teach@Tübingen Postdoc teaching graduate-level courses. More...

Prof. Eleni Asouti

Eleni Asouti is lecturer at the Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool and researcher in archaeobotany, anthracology, palaeoenvironmental change, and the transition from foraging to farming in the Old World. Her particular interests include resource management strategies (terrestrial plants: grasses and trees), the impacts of climate change and instability on decision-making, and the nature of community interactions in Southwest Asia during the late Pleistocene and the early Holocene. She works at sites in Anatolia (Çatalhöyük), Kurdistan (Chamchamal valley), Cyprus, Greece, Iran (Chogha Golan), Jordan, and south India, researching landscape ecologies, people-environment interactions, social identities and food production during the Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic periods. She is also a co-founding member of the Anatolian Archaeobotany (AnAR) research network sponsored by the British Institute in Ankara. More...

Corinna Rößner

Adaptions and changes in plant subsistence strategies at the beginning of the Neolithic in the Northern Fertile Crescent: the archaeobotany of Körtik Tepe, Southeast Turkey. More...

Andrea Orendi

Agricultural dynamics at Bronze Age and Iron Age sites in Palestine. More...

Doğa Karakaya

The archaeobotanical investigation of crop husbandry regimes during the Iron Age at Tell Tayinat and Zincirli, southern Turkey. More...

Alexander Weide

The origins of agriculture at the Aceramic Neolithic Site of Chogha Golan, Ilam Province, Iran (working title). More...

Marc Hradecky

Morphometric analyses of ancient grape seeds (Vitis vinifera) from Coptic wine plantations. More...

Golnaz Ahadi

Archaeobotanical Studies of Early Neolithic Settlements in Western Iran Using Macro- and Micro-botanical Remains.

Jonathan Baines

Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene plant subsistence in Iranian archaeological sites. More...

Gerlinde Bigga

Die Pflanzen von Schöningen - Botanische Makroreste aus den mittelpleistozänen Ablagerungen und das Nutzungspotenzial einer interglazialen Paläoflora, 2014

Özgür Çizer

Archaeobotanical investigations of plant cultivation and husbandry practices at the Early Bronze Age settlement Küllüoba in West-Central Turkey: Considerations on environment, climate and economy, 2015