Tobias Richter's research while affiliated with IT University of Copenhagen and other places

... Traceology builds on the use of microscopy to identify technological and functional related traces, a principle quantitative methods of functional analysis are being explored (Caux et al. 2018;Galland et al. 2019;Ibáñez and Mazzucco 2021;Pedergnana et al. 2020). By examining the surfaces and edges on prehistoric stone tools using different magnifications, micro-negatives, striations, micro-polishes and other traces of abrasion are plotted on the artefacts. ...

... Marreiros et al., 2015), incluyendo a diferentes materias primas antes poco o marginalmente consideradas, como por ejemplo rocas ígneas, cuarzos y cuarcitas Márquez et al., 2016;Perdegnana y Ollé, 2017;Lemorini et al., 2019). Aparte de experimentaciones más controladas (Calandra et al., 2019;Paixao et al., 2021) y el uso de diferentes microscopias complementarias (Fernández Marchena, 2021), en los últimos años se han desarrollado propuestas que buscan cuantificar de manera numérica las huellas de uso para llegar a discernir diferentes materiales y usos Ibáñez-Estévez et al., 2021). ...

... This drainage continues to the south approximately 10 km before emptying into a plain about 40 km southeast of Azraq. Directly to the north of the qa', only a few isolated hunting or pastoral camps and burin sites are known [29]. Along this drainage system, 22 basalt-topped mesas rise above the desert floor by about 40-60 m (Figures 2 and 3). ...

... For the first time, this method was used not only to quantitatively discriminate 3D images of polish generated by different worked materials but also to identify the use of experimental and archaeological tools. It was applied to a collection of archaeological sickles from several archaeological sites dating from the Natufian to the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B periods in the Near East [37][38][39][40]. ...

... The domestication of goat (Capra hircus) started 11,000 years ago in the fertile crescent [1,2]. Based on archaeological caprine remains (around 8200 years BC) from the Zagros mountains (eastern Fertile Crescent, western Iran) and by combining archaeozoological and archaeogenomic approaches, Daly et al. [3] reported the existence of two distinct clusters of goats: one with domestic affinity and one with wild affinity. These findings indicate, that these goats from the late ninth/early eighth millennium BC were genetically diverse, already distinct from wild goats and ancestral to later domestic goats [3]. ...

... The use-wear analyses carried out are too few to differentiate regional tendencies such as food practices or technological choices, and for Northern Mesopotamia there are no chronologically early data. New studies however propose for example the processing of tubers with GPT (Pedersen et al. 2016), hinting at the existence of regional specific foodways which are visible in wear on GPT. ...

... The domestication of grain crops altered the shape and size of their seeds as well as the thickness of their coats [43,44]. Morphometrics, the measurement of seed size and shape, is used to identify domestication, individual species, and the evolution of landraces (e.g., [43,45]), thereby contributing to understanding the development and spread of arable agriculture. This approach has been successful in detecting the predomestication cultivation of fruits, such as the beginnings of viticulture in the Aegean [46], and natural and anthropogenic effects upon the evolution of crop varieties [47]. ...

... Initial studies suggested an immediate postnatal arrest in growth lasting several days (Schour and Massler, 1937), however vital tissue labelling and counts of incremental features reveal that hard tissue secretion continues daily throughout and after birth (Smith, 2006;Antoine et al., 2009), although sometimes at a reduced rate (Birch and Dean, 2009). Identification of this singular life event has enabled a range of consequential applications, including precise age determination from fossil children, inferring premature birth and postnatal survivorship, detecting the initiation of milk consumption, and even identifying a Neanderthal child's season of birth (e.g., Smith et al., 2010;Austin et al., 2013;Birch and Dean, 2014;Witzel, 2014;Smith et al., 2018;Kierdorf et al., 2021). ...

... Seals were also used at the Udall, and at Quoygrew where they were found mainly in the Viking Age/Late Norse farm mound, one of two areas where gannet bones were most common (Harland 2012:142-3, Serjeantson 2013. At Neolithic Shubayqa in Jordan, Yeomans and Richter (2020) showed that gazelle bones and waterfowl carcasses were likely being processed and rendered for oil at the same place. ...

... The identification is based on morphological analyses of modern and archaeological material from several grass species and was first achieved with well-preserved specimens from Chogha Golan. We further examined Triticoid-type grains from recently excavated samples from Early Neolithic Ganj Dareh (Darabi et al. 2019) and archived samples from Tell Brak in northeast Syria, dating from the Late Chalcolithic to the Late Bronze Age (McMahon et al. 2007;Hald 2008), which confirmed their identification as H. piliferum. We provide a detailed distribution map of H. piliferum, based on the study of herbarium specimens at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, London, and review the species' biology and ecological adaptations. ...