Year of graduation: 2017
Thesis title: Reconsidering dental wear as a tool to estimate age in Neanderthals – an exploratory study of sub adult dentitions aged with virtual histology
After my bachelor’s degree in Pre- and Protohistoric Archeology, I was eager to learn more about the natural scientific aspects of archeology. The MSc. program in Tübingen offered me a widespread introduction into the archeological sciences, including geoarchaeology, archaeobotany, archaeometry, and paleogenetics, but the decisive factor for me was their unique paleoanthropology specialization.
With a large osteological collection and renowned, international specialists, the department of Paleoanthropology is a great place if you are interested in the modern way of analyzing skeletal remains from archaeological contexts. Through student projects, lab courses and seminars, us students in paleoanthropology gained practical experience in carefully handling archeological human remains and received training in the latest methods available for the study of skeletal remains and fossils.
Especially working with the fossil record, understanding the life of human populations from the past and reconstructing the evolution of humans is a main focus of the Paleoanthropology department in Tübingen, and the curriculum of this MSc. For the fascination with Neanderthals I developed in my undergraduate studies, Tübingen was the go-to place. Here I was able to study evolution theories and learn from the leaders in the field of Neanderthal Evolution, as new discoveries and publications were directly integrated into the courses and discussed first-hand with the researchers themselves. As a student research assistant, I had the opportunity to complement my studies by working in a project on frequencies of trauma in Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans and finally I was able to investigate the ageing of Neanderthals based on dental anthropological methods for my Master thesis.
Although I chose a specialization in paleoanthropology, the interdisciplinary connections within the MSc. program continued and helped me not only to collaborate with other archeological disciplines but also to make new friends from different countries and academic backgrounds. So this MSc. program is what enabled me to combine my interest in past human populations with archeological questions and scientific methodology, a path I continue in my PhD, where I use confocal microscopy to reconstruct dietary behavior and physiological stress in the Paleolithic.