Appointment period: 1/10/2023 – 30/9/2026

Trained as a microarchaeologist, I have completed my PhD at Bar-Ilan University in close association with the Kimmel Center for Archaeological Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science. My doctoral research focused on the differences of cooking technologies and fuel choices between Bronze and Iron Age cultures in the Levant. My research generally explores human-environment interaction, and especially how environmental conditions dictate human techno-cultural behavior and how this behavior impacts the environment. I am particularly interested in cooking and resource utilization for fuel and food.

Since 2014 I have pursued post-doctoral research in the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and in the Karls-Eberhard Universität, Tübingen, working on several projects related to food resource utilization. My main project was to develop a new method for identifying burnt phytoliths using FTIR spectroscopy. Currently I am taking part in the HARVEST project at Leiden University working on starch preservation. From November 2018 I will research the use of animal dung for construction at the beginning of the Neolithic Period and animal domestication as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain. As a research associate at the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies I will explore the utilization of marine and coastal vegetal resources for food and fuel in antiquity.

 E-mail: shira_gur@eva.mpg.de