Lab Members

Xinyi Liu utilizes a range of stable isotopes and archaeobotanical approaches to explore how past societies domesticated, produced and consumed plants and animals, and how they adapted to new environments in the context of the spread of farming.

My previous research primarily concentrated on Neolithic agriculture in China, where I utilized carbonized plant remains and phytoliths to uncover insights into ancient agricultural practices in urban centers. Currently, I am shifting my focus to explore plant remains from Copan, Honduras, aiming to gain a deeper understanding of the ancient Maya’s agriculture.

I am a bioarchaeologist by training. My current research interests concern human health at the animal-human interface in China, specifically addressing how different animal husbandry practices impact the health and disease landscape.

I am interested in the subsistence strategies of prehistoric societies, with a primary focus on human-environment interactions and early agriculture. I currently work on the utilization of plant resources and the spread of rice farming in Neolithic Southeastern China

My research focuses on the subsistence strategies on the Loess Plateau of China during the Neolithic-Bronze Age, focus on charred plant remains. My current research focuses on the agricultural development of the eastern Loess Plateau during the Neolithic Period.

I am an African archaeologist and zooarchaeologist whose current research examines how and why people in Africa’s past manufactured animal byproducts.

Through a combination of zooarchaeological and biomolecular methods, such as Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) and stable isotope analysis, I explore how animal byproducts reshaped strategies in environmental and climatic adaptability, technological innovations, social networking, and the mobility of hunter-fisher-gatherers in East Africa during the African Humid Period (15,000-5,500 BP).

I am interested in studying the interactions of humans, plants and animals in past societies. I apply multi-isotopic techniques for reconstructing ancient food production and consumption practices across a range of environments and time-periods. I have worked on sites from Neolithic Greece and Turkey, Byzantine Levant, and am excited to join this laboratory to work on movement of crops across Eurasia in prehistory.

I am a bioarchaeologist interested in understanding how populations subsisted in diverse ecological niches. My current research takes place in southern Peru along the Atacama desert. Specifically, my focus includes human migration and dietary patterns in ancient societies occupying the Andes.

I am a zooarchaeologist interested in the origins and effects of agriculture and domestication and am especially interested in the evolutionary and social processes influencing and enabling their development. I use faunal demographic reconstruction, stable isotopic analyses, and ethnoarchaeology to better understand the many contexts out of which domestication arose, as well as the diversity of regional agricultural practices that resulted.

I am interested in early agriculture and the different contemporary agricultural approaches practiced in different landscapes of China and neighboring regions. Through the application of plant stable isotopic analysis, my current research primarily focuses on 1) understanding the water management strategies of the earliest Southwest Asian crops to arrive in China; and 2) the translocation of Chinese domesticated millets into the Eurasian continent.