Jennifer Jones - Academic Staff

Jennifer is an archaeological scientist. She is interested in exploring the interactions between humans, animals and the environments in which they lived. She uses stable isotope analysis alongside traditional zooarchaeological methods to reconstruct past human diet, animal management strategies and faunal palaeoecologies. She is also interested in using biomolecular methods alongside wider proxies to reconstruct past environmental and climatic changes and how this impacted on past human and animal behaviour.

Jennifer’s research explores a range of topics related to human-animal-environment interactions. She has recently published researcher on the survival of human and animal populations in the Southern European refugia during the Last Glacial Maximum, and the environmental conditions surrounding the extinction of the Neanderthals and Rise of Modern Humans in Southern Europe. She is also interested in the diet of early farmers, and the pastoral strategies that they used, and the adaptations of Atlantic farmers to liminal insular environments. Jennifer teaches on a range of modules at UCLan, drawing on examples from her research in her lectures and classes.

Before starting at UCLan Jennifer has previously worked in institutions in both the UK and Spain She held a Juan de la Cierva Incorporación Fellowship awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, innovation, and Universities, at the University of Cantabria in Spain (2019-2020). Prior to this Jennifer was a Lecturer (2018-2019) and Teaching Fellow (2017-2018) in Archaeological Science at the University of Aberdeen where she coordinated a range of Undergraduate and master’s modules. Between 2015-2017 Jennifer held a prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow to research her project “CLIMAPROX: Hunter-Gatherer adaptations in northern Iberian Refugia from the Last Glacial Maximum to the Mesolithic: A Multi-Proxy Climatic Investigation”, at the University of Cantabria. She was also a Postdoctoral Researcher as part of the project “EUROREFUGIA: Human Subsistence and Climate Change in European Refugia: Late Neanderthals and Early Modern Humans” also at the University of Cantabria.

Qualifications

Areas of Interest / Expertise

External Affiliations / Memberships

Jennifer is an archaeological scientist specialising in the use of stable isotope analysis alongside more traditional zooarchaeological techniques to understand more about past human diet, animal management strategies, faunal palaeoecologies, and how environmental change impacted on the behaviour of humans and animals. She uses multi isotope analysis (δ13C, δ15N, δ18O, δ34S) to answer questions about what people ate in the past, what the environment was like, how faunal niches changed, how animals were being managed in the landscape, and human and animal adaptations to changing environmental conditions. She works on time periods ranging from the Middle Palaeolithic to Viking and Norse periods and beyond to answer questions about the complex relationships between humans, animals, and the environments that they lived in She is particularly interested in the following themes:

Integrating zooarchaeological evidence and biomolecular methodologies
Human and animal responses to changing environments of the late Pleistocene
Animal husbandry strategies in liminal environments
Palaeolithic faunal paleoecologies
Human economic adaptations to new environments
Prehistoric animal management strategies and landscape use

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Research Group Memberships

Research Projects

Current Research Projects:
Principle investigator - Early Atlantic Farmers and the challenges of transitioning to agriculture: Insights from El Mirón Cave
Principle investigator-Bioarchaeology, Palaeoenvironments and Paleoclimates during the Palaeolithic in the Iberian Peninsula.
Collaborator: An Early Medieval West African from Kent: C14 dates, and stable isotopes from Uptown, Estery
Previous Research Projects
Principle investor- Hunter-Gatherer adaptations in Northern Iberian Refugia from the Last Glacial Maximum to the Mesolithic: a multi-proxy climatic investigation ‘CLIMAPROX’
Collaborator- Human Subsistence and Climate Change in European Refugia: Late Neanderthals and Early Modern Humans (EUROREFUGIA)
Co-Investigator: Diversification and Sustainability in Coastal communities: The role of Marine Resources.

Grants

2019-2020 Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación Postdoctoral Fellowship (PI) Awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.
2015-2017 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (PI) European Commission Horizons 2020 programme.
2009-2013, Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) PhD Award NE/F021054/1.
2010-2012 Natural Environment Research Council (Co-I) Life Sciences Mass Spectrometry Analytical Grant. Co-I. Ref: EK158-03/10

Conferences & Events

In the last 5 years Jennifer has been involved in the organisation of sessions in the following conferences:
26th European Association of Archaeologists conference, Budapest, Hungary. Session Co-organiser with Dr. Geoff Smith. Reconstructing Faunal exploitation patterns, palaeoecologies and living landscapes of the Pleistocene.
24th European Association of Archaeologists conference. Barcelona, Spain. Session Co-organiser: with Dr. Benjamin Irvine. Bioarchaeological approaches towards understanding diet and subsistence, and their role in the formation of early societies.
22nd European Association of Archaeologists conference. Vilnius, Lithuania. Session Co-organiser with Dr. Kate Britton. Novel approaches to understanding palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic change, and their impact on past human and animal behaviour.

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Dr Jennifer Jones