In September, Frankie Tait (PhD Student) and Anna Wagner (PhD Student) attended the European Society for the study of Human Evolution (ESHE) conference in Paris, France. In collaboration with the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle the podium sessions were given in the Verniquet Amphitheatre and the poster sessions took place in the Grande Nef Galerie Minéralogie. The conference focused on early hominin morphometrics with advancements in techniques such as amino acid and luminescence dating also highlighted. Podium talks and posters covered a wide range of topics including fire use, aDNA, zooarchaeology, taphonomy and palaeoproteomics, to name a few.
Frankie and Anna both presented posters discussing new results and key themes from the COEXIST project. Frankie contextualised the need for chronologies at middle-upper palaeolithic sites across Central and South East Europe by mapping out the lack of reliable radiocarbon dates within the region. Frankie then presented new dates from two cave sites in Romania, which either conflicted with previously published dates or helped to refine the site’s context – all of the new dates used ultrafiltration and resulted in older dates than previously reported. Similarly, Anna presented a mapped visual representation of sites with published faunal data and taphonomy and discussed how her work on integrating ZooMS and zooarchaeology causes us to re-think subsistence practices during the Neanderthal-Homo sapiens coexistence period.
