University of Alberta

Faculty Member, Anthropology

Professor

Faculty of Arts

About

Research

After graduating with MA and PhD degrees from the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland, I emigrated to Canada and switched my interests from early farming communities (Neolithic) of Central Europe to Mesolithic and Neolithic hunter-gatherers of the Lake Baikal region, Siberia.

Since 1994, in collaboration with Russian colleagues form the Irkutsk State University, I excavated in the Baikal region two stratified habitation sites (Gorelyi Les and Sagan-Zaba) and three cemeteries (Khuzhir-Nuge XIV, Kurma XI, and Shamanka II). These sites, and many other excavated previously by Russian archaeologists, produced rich collections of human and animal faunal remains which are now being examined by the multidisciplinary Baikal Archaeology Project based at the University of Alberta (http://baikal.arts.ualberta.ca/). Main research objectives involve patterns of long-term culture change and spatial differentiation among the middle Holocene (c. 8000–3000 cal BP) hunter-gatherers of the region. More specific projects include subsistence activities, hunting and fishing techniques, diet, mobility patterns, mortuary ritual and patterns of cemetery use, social organization, human skeletal biology, as well as climatic and environmental variability within the broader region.

This research project is currently under expansion to include also hunter-gatherers, prehistoric and historic, from Hokkaido, Japan, to lead eventually to a comparison between the two regions.
The Hokkaido branch of the project will include examination of human and faunal osteological remains stored in various Hokkaido research institutions with the same methods applied to the Baikal materials (e.g., extensive radiocarbon dating, carbon, nitrogen, and strontium isotopes, trace elements, ancient DNA, human ostebiography and biomechanics, zooarchaeology, and climate and environment modeling. Fieldwork will start in summer 2011 and will include excavations of two sites on Rebun Island, northwest of Hokkaido. Funadomari is a shell midden with human burials extending as far back as Middle Jomon while Hamanaka is a Late Jomon cemetery.

Opportunities for graduate students

The Baikal Archaeology Project, including its new Hokkaido branch, offers ample and diverse opportunities for graduate students at the MA and PhD levels as much in the field as with laboratory work and theoretical approaches. I am particularly interested in application of the optimal foraging theory to Baikal and Hokkaido hunter-gatherers, modeling of past hunter-gatherer diets based on carbon and nitrogen stable isotope data, and modeling of culture transmission mechanisms in hunter-gatherers, and other topics as mentioned in my own research interests.

Contact Information