Dr. Alicia Ventresca-Miller is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and Assistant Curator of Asian Archaeology at the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology. She is also the director of the Ancient Protein and Isotope Laboratory.
In addition, she is a Co-director and the Head Bioarchaeologist for NOMAD Science and a National Geographic Explorer.
Dr. Ventresca-Miller is also a founding member of Steppe Sisters, an international networking group for women, and those who identify as women, conducting research in Central Asia, Mongolia, and China.
Dr. Ventresca-Miller applies biomolecular techniques to investigate how shifts in food production intersect with the emergence of complex societies. As part of a multi-species anthropological approach, she examines the mechanisms fueling urbanization including residential mobility, settlement provisioning, and the adoption of domesticates such as millet and livestock. Although focused on Central and Inner Asia, her work has global implications as it integrates science and anthropology to intercede in narratives that consider pastoralists inherently nomadic and lacking urbanization. Through novel isotopic and proteomic methods, her work provides nuanced interpretations of key transitions in human societies, including the adoption of cultigens, disease transmission, and the spread of dairying.
Research Interests
- Ancient diet and mobility
- Pastoral lifeways and social complexity
- Rise of urban economies
- Dairying and domestication
- Central Asia, Inner Asia, Siberia
Erina Baci is a PhD candidate in the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology at the University of Michigan. Her research interests include Balkan prehistory, settlement, mobility, and GIS applications in archaeology. She is currently conducting research in Western Kosova, in the region of Dukagjin, at two Late Bronze-Early Iron Age (1400-800 BCE) hillforts to gain a better understanding of settlement, mobility and interaction during this time.
Research Interests
- Albania, Kosovo: Prehistory of Albania and Kosovo
- Settlement pattern analysis
- GIS in archaeology
Matthew Brown is a Doctoral Candidate in Anthropology at the University of Michigan.
Kara Larson is a Doctoral Candidate in Anthropology at the University of Michigan.
Research Interests
- Stable isotope analyses
- Zooarchaeology
- Environmental archaeology
- Migration and seasonal mobility
- Early state formation and trade
Aubree Marshall
Aubree Marshall is a visiting students from Michigan State University. Their research focuses on the relationship between social identity and food access in ancient populations from central Belize. To do this, they use dental calculus inclusions to identify specific plants and proteins that individuals interacted with and use cultural context to understand how food access may have varied among different groups.
Georgia Oppenheim is a Ph.D. candidate in Biological Anthropology. She is broadly interested in human diet in the past and how environment mediated dietary change. Currently, she is working on studying the habitat of Australopithecus afarensis in eastern Africa through faunal tooth enamel isotopes to understand the origins of dietary flexibility in the hominin lineage.
Research Interests
- Paleoanthropology
- Hominin environmental and dietary reconstruction
- Chemical analysis
Iride Tomažič is a Doctoral Candidate in Anthropology at the University of Michigan. Iride’s research is focused on assessing the impacts of metallurgy on communities, their animals, and the environment by tracking changes over time in both settlement and mortuary records– from the Copper Age to the Bronze Age in the Southern Carpathian Basin and the Balkans. She has conducted extensive fieldwork (research and CRM) and laboratory work in continental Europe, the UK, Peru, and North America.
Research Interests
- Copper Age
- Bronze Age societies in the Balkans and Carpathian Basin
- Metallurgy
- Environmental contamination
- Toxicology
- Trace element and isotopes
- Mortuary archaeology
- Role theory
