Sarah Pederzani

I am a stable isotope archaeologist with a focus on developing site-specific approaches to establishing the climatic preferences and climatically driven behaviours and adaptations of Pleistocene humans. Archaeologically, my research is predominantly situated in the European Middle and Upper Palaeolithic. In my PhD (2016 – 2021) and postdoc (2020-2021) at the Department of Human Evolution at the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology I explored how oxygen isotope analysis of zooarchaeological faunal remains can be used to reconstruct climatic context in a local context and on the temporal scale of human behaviours expressed in the archaeological record. At the AMBI Lab I am combining my research on faunal stable isotope with palaeoclimatic reconstructions using lipid biomarkers in archaeological sediments. Using a combination of these techniques my project explores if and when the climatic conditions of Neanderthal site occupation differed from natural climatic fluctuations and how this relates to climatic preferences in site-use, using the example of La Ferrassie, France. At the same time, I am also further developing the use of sediment samples from resin-impregnated micromorphology blocks as a source of lipid biomarker palaeoclimate proxys. My postdoctoral project at the AMBI Lab is funded by the German Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina Akademie der Naturforscher).