Karen & Allan, Nicky & Hannah on the radio

Staff from the department have been off filling the air waves... again. Nicky Milner and Hannah Koon have been helping to explain to listners what has been happening at the critically important Mesolithic site of Star Carr on Radio 4's Making History. Meanhwile Karen Hardy and Alan Hall have been helping Fergus the Forager (Fergus Drennan) explore the wilder side of food in Britian on Shared Earth

Listen to Fergus here and here

Toney Blakeney visits BioArch

Toney Blakeny (University of Sydney/ Cereal Solutions) thought he was on a flying visity to BioArch when he arrive last week, but he is still here and we are not letting him go. Tony and expert in starch biochemistry has been visiting BioArch where he has been collaborating with Karen Hardy on the preservation of starch in archaeological artefacts. Problem is, he is simply too useful to have around, and we are not sure that we will let him go - sorry Rosemary.

Wellcome Trust Bioarchaeology Fellows present their work

The three Wellcome Trust Bioarchaeology Fellows, Kirsty Penkman, Hannah Koon and Stephen Buckley present their research to Dr Mark Walport - Director of the Wellcome Trust when her presented the the York Biology Open Lecture on Wednesday 23rd May.

Rebecca has a new job.

Congratulations to Rebecca (at back), who has been awarded a lectureship in Dental Morphology at the University of Liverpool. It will great to have Rebecca up north again after her sojourns in Bristol and Exeter and we hope to see her back in BioArch soon.

Enrico on Canadian Radio, Matthew on the BBC

BioArch hit the media heights when the paper "Ancient Biomolecules from Deep Ice Cores Reveal a Forested Southern Greenland" was published in Science. Matthew appeared on BBC News 24, while Enrico featured on Radio Canada. OK so you wern't watching, BBC News 24, but never mind, Matthews dad has the video of his appearance, so you can count the number of times he said "amazing!" No one has tracked down Enrico's radio performance, but there is audio of Matthew talking to BBC Radio Scotland on the departmental website (so there is no excuse to miss it).

Below is a selection of the news stories - the actual article is here.

Greenland ice yields hope on climate
Boston Globe, United States - 6 Jul 2007

Greenland reveals its true colours Globe and Mail, Canada - 6 Jul 2007

DNA reveals Greenland's lush past BBC News, UK - 6 Jul 2007

Greenland really was green, world's oldest DNA reveals Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - 6 Jul 2007

Long back, Greenland was really green Times of India, India - 6 Jul 2007

Greenland once had thriving forests, say scientists Canada.com, Canada - 6 Jul 2007

DNA shows Greenland was once green Aljazeera.net, Qatar - 6 Jul 2007

Greenland greener than thought during last Ice Age

Kirsty Keynotes for the Worlds Malacologists

Kirsty has been invited to be keynote speaker at theWorld Congress of Malacology - Antwerp, Belgium 15 - 20 July 2007. Not bad for an archaeologists, come chemist, come Quaternary Scientist.... Hang on a minute Kirsty, exactly what are you? Ah! the next story gives the answer - an Analytical Chemist.

Kirsty has a new job

We say "Goodbye", then we say "Hello" to Kirsty, who will be leaving BioArch to take up a full time position as a lecturer in Analytical Chemistry this October in the Department of Chemistry, University of York.

Fortunately she will only be a short walk across the campus, and it gives us an excuse to play we even more equipment....

Caroline is Magnum Cum Laude

Congratulations to Caroline, (seen here between Ines and Beatrice) who was awarded her PhD in Archaeological Proteomics at the University of Lille. Caroline was awarded her PhD with maximum honours - and although we at BioArch can claim no credit for it, we are very pleased that her PhD defence went so well!

Congratulations to Hannah

Congratulations to Hannah Koon on the award of her PhD. Here she is with a strange man in a mismatched suit and gown.

Renee van de Locht visits Bioarch

Renee van de Locht is a Master student Landscape Archaeology in the Institute for Geo-and BioArchaeology (IGBA), at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.

She is currently working on Starch analysis with Karen Hardy. This research will be her Master thesis project. The samples Renee and Karen are working on are from central Turkey; particularly, from the sites of Çatal Huyuk and Kaman Kalehuyuk.

Palaeofellows produce a Palaeoposter

Palaeo PhD fellows and some short term fellows built a poster for the Dept of Archaeology - it seemed a good opportunity to explain the patchwork-like Palaeo projects to the archaeologists...

María Inés Zylber visits BioArch

María Inés Zylber is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Parasitology, Hadassah Medical School, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Supervisor: Prof. Charles Greenblatt)

Thesis title: “Mummy remains: morphological, microbiological and biochemical approaches to their molecular taphonomy”.

The objectives of her study are:

1. Extend the knowledge of changes in "ancient biomolecules" as caused by post-mortem transformation processes in human tissue.


2. Apply an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the stability of biomolecules in different ancient tissues, based on the visualized structures.

She is working on two collections: Nubian mummies (A.D. 550 – 1450) and Hungarian mummies (1731 – 1838).

At BioArch she is doing shotgun proteomics in order to study the level of degradation of mummy tissues by assesing the state of preservation of collagen type I in both populations of study. The techniques for this approach are protein extraction from soft and mineralised tissues with posterior characterization by nanoLC-MS/MS and TEM.

Contact details:
Lic. María Inés Zylber
Department of Parasitology
Hebrew University - Hadassah Medical School
P.O.Box 12272, Ein Karem
Jerusalem 91120, ISRAEL
Telephone: 972-(0)2-6757468
Mobile: 972-(0)52-3611774
Fax: 972-(0)2-6757425
Website: http://kuvin.huji.ac.il

Simona Varvara visits BioArch

Simona Varvara is visiting BioArch for three weeks.
She is here to learn amino acid racemisation technique to use in her brand new lab in Alba Iulia (Romania). Hope to see her soon again!