Ricerc@Sapienza

My primary research focuses on foraging and the earliest farming societies in the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean. I have written about various aspects of mortuary and corporeal symbolism, including personal adornment, representational imagery, mortuary practices, social memory, and household archaeology in prehistory. I have also integrated science-based methodologies with archaeological interpretation, primarily in relation to bioarchaeology, archaeothanatology, palaeodietary studies, and radiocarbon dating combined with Bayesian statistical modeling. Through my research, I have revised the dating and understanding of the key European Mesolithic–Neolithic sequence at the site of Lepenski Vir. The emerging picture reveals a more complex world of mixed identities and practices than the simple dichotomy of foragers versus farmers at the dawn of agriculture in this part of Europe. These inferences have recently been supported by human aDNA data from samples I collected in the region, published in a Nature article in 2018. My monograph Deathways at Lepenski Vir: Patterns in Mortuary Practice (2016) explores the role of mortuary data in reconstructing diverse practice-based rituals and perceptions of the living and dead body throughout the Mesolithic and Neolithic use of this iconic site of European prehistory. Methodologically, the book provides a comprehensive argument for the necessity of integrating archaeological and bioarchaeological data. In 2019, I received a major grant from the NOMIS Foundation (“On the Move”), followed in 2020 by an Individual Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship to focus on dental histology, specifically the analysis of life histories through cementum and enamel. I served as lead editor for the two-volume Foraging Assemblages (2021), which presents the proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on the Mesolithic in Europe and includes over 120 contributions. My other published volumes include Archaeology and Memory (2010) and Past Bodies: Body-Centred Research in Archaeology (2008), the latter co-edited with John Robb. I have conducted archaeological fieldwork at numerous Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic sites in Serbia, Montenegro, and Croatia, and have participated in research projects in Italy, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, and Brazil.