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School of Geosciences

Professor Keith Dobney

Professor Keith Dobney
Professor Keith Dobney
Professor Keith Dobney

BA (Lancaster), MSc (London), PhD (Bradford)

Emeritus Professor

About
Email Address
keith.dobney@abdn.ac.uk
Office Address
Department of Archaeology University of Aberdeen St. Mary's, Elphinstone Road Aberdeen AB24 3UF Scotland
School/Department
School of Geosciences

Biography

Professor Dobney began his zooarchaeological career working as a Research Assistant to Don Brothwell at the Institute of Archaeology in London. Early research into human and animal palaeopathology and zooarchaeology led to a PhD in Archaeological Science at the University of Bradford, to freelance work in Britain and the Middle East, then to a research post funded by English Heritage at the Environmental Archaeology Unit, University of York. From the EAU in York, Keith moved to the Archaeology Department at Durham University where he held two consecutive Wellcome Trust Bioarchaeology Research Fellowships from 2000-2008. He became a Reader in the Archaeology Department at Durham prior to being appointed in Aberdeen in 2009.

For the last 25 years, Keith has been actively involved in bioarchaeological research in Britain, the Middle East, Central Asia and Central America, and since 2000, has developed international collaborative research in East Asia and Oceania. With the main material focus of his work being the study of animal and human remains, Keith's research incorporates a broad temporal and geographic spread, and involves the use of traditional and novel techniques and approaches.

Keith has organised several major international conferences and workshops, has been invited to give research seminars and presentations at academic and research institutions across the world and has held several visiting research fellowships at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. and the Australian National University in Canberra. He is currently one of two project leaders of a CNRS funded Projet de Groupement De Recherche Européen (GDRE) entitled - BIOARCH- Bioarchaeological Investigations of the Interactions between Holocene Human Societies and their Environments - and the Director of a recently funded Co-Reach Chinese-European research grouping (EUCH-BIOARCH).

Research

Research Overview

Principal research themes include the origins of agriculture, the domestication of animals, human and animal dispersal, diet and health, palaeopathology and palaeoeconomics.

Funding and Grants

2000

£186,864

Wellcome Trust – The bioarchaeology of pig domestication and husbandry: its role in the biological, economic and social development of complex human society.

2001

$1,585

Appointment as a Smithsonian Institution Short-term Visitor at the National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC.

2002

£2,450

Royal Society and Armenian Academy of Science. Visiting Fellowship to Durham for Dr Ninna Manaseryan

2003

£271,793

Wellcome Trust - Travelling companions and unwelcome guests: an integrated zooarchaeological and biomolecular approach to human dispersal and exchange networks in the Holocene.

2005

$1,727

Appointment as a Smithsonian Institution Short-term Visitor at the National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC.

2005

£22,024

Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professorship for Professor Jing Yuan, Institute of Archaeology, CASS, Beijing.

2005

£157,442

AHRC - The prehistoric origins of Orcadian cultural exchange networks: biomolecular and morphometric studies of Orkney voles (co P.I.'s - Profs Jeremy Searle and Paul O'Higgins, University of York).

2006

£5,969

English Heritage – Completion of monograph entitled: Farmers, Monks and Aristocrats.

2006

£1,500

Daiwa Foundation - Morphometric variation and dental enamel defects in the teeth of ancient island populations of Japanese wild boar (Sus scrofa) as a proxy for studying human interaction in the Jomon period.

2006

£380,249

AHRC - co PI - The origin and spread of stock-keeping in the Near East and Europe – a new database approach (P.I. Prof. Stephen Shennan, Institute of Archaeology UCL.

2006

£125,000

P.I. for RCUK Fellowship -  Ancient DNA and human dispersal – Research Councils

2007

£217,341

Leverhulme Trust – Pigs, people and the Neolithisation of Europe – returned after award of NERC grant below.

2007

£460,009

NERC - Pigs, people and the Neolithisation of Europe – co i's Dr Greger Larson, Dr Una Strand-Vidardottir, Prof. Rus Hoelzel

2007

£48,717

NERC – Tied studentship linked with funded project - Pigs, people and the neolithisation of Europe

2008

£60,896

Leverhulme Trust - PhD studentship (and associated indirect costs) to work on Ancient DNA

2009

 

 

2010

€150,685

 

 

£806,000

Co-Reach (with Institute of Archaeology, Beijing, Natural History Museum Paris & Max Planck Institute, Leipzig) – European-Chinese Bioarchaeology Collaboration (EUCH-BIOARCH) – Contributing to a Broader Agenda.

NERC - Reconsidering Austronesian Homeland and Dispersal Models using Genetic and Morphological Signatures of Domestic Animals - joint with Durham University - co-i's Dr Greger, Larson, Dr Thomas Cucchi and Dr Una Strand-Vidarsdottir.

 

Publications

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