About
36
Publications
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Introduction
My field of work comprises applied (paleo-)ecology with special emphasis on the study of ecological niche construction, dynamics and the resulting behavioral changes of humans and animals.
I am interested in the ecology of glacial and interglacial faunal communities, the trophic and ecological niche partitioning of carnivores, the anthropogenic impact on animal niches with resulting behavioral changes, and the early symbiotic relationships between humans and animals.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
November 2023 - present
February 2021 - July 2021
Position
- Scientific coordinator for the move of scientific collections and laboratories
Description
- Responsible for planning and organization the move of scientific collections and laboratories
November 2023 - October 2024
Position
- PostDoc Position
Description
- Part of the Powerful Plant Project of Karen Hardy (Glasgow) https://powerfulplants.gla.ac.uk/ Responsible for (plant) diet reconstruction of Pleistocene hunter-gatherer communities by using stable isotope analysis on single amino acids from fossil bone collagen.
Education
March 2017 - November 2020
October 2014 - September 2017
October 2007 - September 2011
Field of study
- Ur- und Frühgeschichte/Biologische Anthropologie (Prehistoric Archaeology/Anthropology)
Publications
Publications (36)
Nowadays, opportunistic small predators, such as foxes (Vulpes vulpes and Vulpes lagopus), are well known to be very adaptable to human modified ecosystems. However, the timing of the start of this phenomenon in terms of human impact on ecosystems and of the implications for foxes has hardly been studied. We hypothesize that foxes can be used as an...
Dogs are known to be the oldest animals domesticated by humans. Although many studies have examined wolf domestication, the geographic and temporal origin of this process is still being debated. To address this issue, our study sheds new light on the early stages of wolf domestication during the Magdalenian period (16–14 ka cal BP) in the Hegau Jur...
Synanthropic behavior, i.e., the behavior of wild animals that benefit from a shared ecology with humans, has existed long before the sedentarization of Homo sapiens during the Neolithic, around 10,000 years ago. This study describes and discusses the concept of an older animal-human relationship: paleo-synanthropic behavior and the associated pale...
The earlier Gravettian of Southern Moravia—the Pavlovian—is notable for the many raven bones (Corvus corax) documented in its faunal assemblages. On the basis of the rich zooarchaeological and settlement data from the Pavlovian, previous work suggested that common ravens were attracted by human domestic activities and subsequently captured by Pavlo...
The ca. 0.7 Ma old Thomas Quarry I - Grotte à Hominidés (ThI-GH) in Casablanca (Morocco) has yielded well-preserved faunal remains (including Homo sp.) as well as Acheulean artefacts, offering a unique opportunity to study the environment and ecology of the earliest hominins in Morocco. The ThI-GH faunal assemblage is taxonomically diverse, compris...
After the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM: ~ 26.5–19.0 ka cal BP), large-scale warming resulted in glacial retreat and climatic amelioration, prompting changes to local and regional ecosystems across Eurasia during the Late Glacial. Consequently, Magdalenian hunter-gatherers reoccupied parts of Central Europe that were mostly devoid of humans during the...
The spotted hyena ( Crocuta crocuta ) was an important large carnivore of Pleistocene ecosystems in Africa and Eurasia. Like its modern relatives, this obligate carnivore was adapted to crush and digest bones of its prey and absorb organic matter from bones more efficiently than any other carnivore. This difference in the nutrient resource use betw...
The evolving role of past human populations in broader ecosystem processes is an important frontier in palae-oecological research yet remains notoriously difficult to systematically address on a pan-European scale. This paper develops a macro-archaeological approach grounded in newer developments in niche construction theory, carrion ecology, and c...
Plants are a crucial part of the human diet, serving as a primary source of micronutrients, fiber, and carbohydrates, providing readily available energy. Beyond the consumption of cooked and raw edible plants, early humans also developed methods for plant processing for delayed consumption, to de-toxify/improve bioavailability, and perhaps for flav...
Oscar Fraas was one of the first natural scientists to establish the existence of Ice Age humans. From November 1854 until 1894, he held various positions in the Royal Natural History Cabinet in Stuttgart. As early as the 1860s, he conducted a series of experiments to explain and understand how traces and scratches on Ice Age bone fragments were ma...
Today's biodiversity crisis fundamentally threatens the habitability of the planet, thus ranking among the primary human challenges of our time. Much emphasis is currently placed on the loss of biodiversity in the Anthropocene, yet these debates often portray biodiversity as a purely natural phenomenon without much consideration of its human dimens...
The paper focuses on the Pleistocene deposits in Perspektywiczna Cave, southern Poland, related to cave hyena ( Crocuta crocuta ). We used direct radiocarbon dating of hyena fossils supported by genetic and stable isotope analyses to infer the paleobiology of this population. Radiocarbon dating of 19 hyena remains suggests long inhabitation of the...
Background and objectives
Virtual teaching tools have gained increasing importance in recent years. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the need for media-based and self-regulated tools. What is missing are tools that allow us to interlink highly interdisciplinary fields such as evolutionary medicine and, at the same time, allow us...
Supplementary information to the Poster "Foxes as proxy for human activities in the past:
Isotopic evidence from Southwest Germany"
The Early Gravettian of Southern Moravia – the Pavlovian – is notable for its corvid-rich faunal assemblages dominated by common ravens ( Corvus corax ). Based on the available zooarchaeological and settlement data from the Pavlovian, it has been hypothesized that ravens were attracted by human domestic activities and subsequently captured by Pavlo...
The grey wolf (Canis lupus) was the first species to give rise to a domestic population, and they remained widespread throughout the last Ice Age when many other large mammal species went extinct. Little is known, however, about the history and possible extinction of past wolf populations or when and where the wolf progenitors of the present-day do...
Fox remains are known from almost every European Late Pleistocene site (about 100 to 13,000 years ago). Of particular interest in archaeological studies are the perforated fox canines, found in the Swabian Jura sites (SW-Germany), originating from about 42 to 30,000 years ago. Cut marks on fox bones show that fur and meat were important as well....
The question, whether a dog is a dog or rather a wolf, is highly debated in the field of zooarchaeology, paleogenetic, and stable isotopes. Recent evidence points towards an onset of wolf domestication in south-western Germany and northern Switzerland at around 16 to 15,000 years ago. Regarding diet of wolves and potential dogs, both groups fed on...
The question, whether a dog is a dog or rather a wolf, became recently highly debated. Recent evidence points towards an onset of domestication at around 16 to 15,000 years ago including an intriguing example of the Kesslerloch cave (CH), where beside wolf remains, one large canid has been morphologically and genetically confirmed as dog. Regarding...
In many countries and fables, characteristics such as "smart" and "sly" as well as other human-like behavior have been attributed to foxes for a long time. However, is it also smart and sly to invoke foxes to prove human behavior from a long time ago?
Remains of arctic and red foxes (Vulpes lagopus and Vulpes vulpes) are known from almost every Eu...
In this study, we examine the role of foxes in Palaeolithic economies, focusing on sites of the Middle Palaeolithic, Aurignacian, Gravettian and Magdalenian of the Swabian Jura. For this purpose, we used published faunal data from 26 assemblages from the region, including new information from the Magdalenian layers of Langmahdhalde. We explore how...
The Late Glacial and early Holocene (ca. 15,000–6,000 cal BP) witnessed major changes in the environmental conditions which led to the establishment of temperate vegetation and animal species, thereby offering new subsistence opportunities to the population of hunter-gatherers. Measurements of the relative abundances in 13C and 15N were applied to...
Significance
Most of today’s domesticates began as farm animals, but cat domestication took a different path. Cats became commensal of humans somewhere in the Fertile Crescent, attracted to early farmers’ settlements by rodent pests. Cat remains from Poland dated to 4,200 to 2,300 y BCE are currently the earliest evidence for the migration of the N...
Fox (Vulpes vulpes and Vulpes lagopus), wolf (Canis lupus) and dog (Canis lupus familiaris) remains are commonly found in the faunal assemblages of Magdalenian sites in Central Europe. However, little is known about their ecology in terms of food preference and niche partitioning. We hypothesize that domestication leads to a new trophic niche for d...
Correlating cultural, technological and ecological aspects of both Upper pleistocene modern humans (UpMHs) and Neandertals provides a useful approach for achieving robust predictions about what makes us human. Here we present ecological information for a period of special relevance in human evolution, the time of replacement of Neandertals by moder...
To distinguish two closely related species, like the pine marten (Martes martes) and the beech marten (Martes
foina), most scientists use the cranial features. The aim of this paper was to define other characteristic, morphological
and metric sections to determine both sex and species of the German martens. For these we used measurable
postcranial...
Humans occupied the cave sites of the Swabian Jura during the Aurignacian and Gravettian. Many remains of their hunting activities were found in these sites. Not only bones of large prey were recognized; in addition, bones from red and arctic foxes were deposited in the caves (Conard et al. 2013). Fox teeth were an important raw material for pendan...
During the pre-LGM both fox species, the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and the arctic fox (Alopex lagopus), coexisted in the same habitat. Today, both foxes occupy the same niche and are competitors if they live in the same habitat. With the analysis of 13C and 15N values of the postcranial fox bones from Geißenklösterle and Hohle Fels, it was possible t...
Red and arctic foxes were present in all archaeological layers of the Ach Valley (Swabian Alp, Southern Germany). In general, teeth were used to determine both species. But for example, around 40% of the fox remains from Geißenklösterle came from postcranial elements. Not all of them could be determined on a species level – and the most of the dete...
In this 2nd workshop we tested smoothers for cleaning and processing skins, after reconstructing the chaîne opératoire of the smoothers made out of Proboscidian ribs during our 1st workshop (see other poster). Our research question was whether shape and polish of smoothers are produced during the processing of skin or whether this was prepared befo...
