The Archaeology Department is pleased to announce the availability of a Natural Environmental Research Council funded PhD, commencing on 30 September 2013, to award to a suitable applicant.
The studentship will last for three years, cover the full cost of tuition fees for UK students, pays an annual tax-free stipend, and has an annual Research Support and Training Grant.
Eligibility for this post is as follows:
- UK students are eligible for fees, stipend and research costs;
- EU students who have been resident in the UK for 3 years immediately prior to the start of the award (including full-time education) are also entitled for a full award;
- EU students are eligible for fees but not for the stipend or the research costs;
- Non-EU students are unfortunately not eligible to apply.
This is a joint studentship award between the Archaeology Departments at the University of Aberdeen and Durham University AND In order to apply, you should complete a single application online (see: Applying to Durham University) and send the following to the Postgraduate Secretary, Helen Wood at Durham University, by Monday, 15 April 2013:
1) Your curriculum vitae
2) A cover letter explaining why you are qualified for the project that you are applying to. If you are applying for more than one project, please provide a covering letter for each and specify the project code in your letter.
3) Two letters of recommendation in support of your application.
Project title: Testing Pleistocene Dog Domestication by Combining Ancient DNA and Morphometrics
Primary Supervisors: Dr Greger Larson (Durham University), Prof Keith Dobney (University of Aberdeen), Prof Jean-Denis Vigne (Natural History Museum, Paris), Dr Mietje Germonpre (Natural History Museum, Brussels), Dr Susan Crockford (University of Victoria, Canada).
Project Overview: The dog is unique amongst the domesticated animals in being not only the first species to be domesticated, but also to be the only domestic animal to predate the advent of farming. Though there is a pervasive uncertainty regarding where and how many times dogs were domesticated, most researchers are confident that true dogs appear across the Old World at about 15kya.
Their sudden appearance in disparate geographic locations, however, has led some researchers to suggest a more intimate and deeper antiquity to wolf-human interaction. In fact, recent evidence has been interpreted to suggest that domestic (or incipient) dogs were present before the Last Glacial Maximum in Belgium, the Czech Republic, and southwestern Siberia. Others, however, argue that these purported early dog remains represent either wolves going through the initial phases of an incomplete domestication process, short-faced wolves adapting to new feeding opportunities afforded by the debris available at human hunting sites, or simply individuals from morphologically distinct or variable local populations of Late Pleistocene wolves.
As part of an NERC-funded research grant, the recipient of this tied studentship will systematically collect 2D and 3D data of dental, cranial and specific skeletal morphologies from both the early fossil canids from Belgium, the Czech Republic and S.W. Siberia, as well as from some additional (contemporary) sites across the project study area. In addition, the student will extract DNA from fossil material and generate both mitochondrial and nuclear datasets. The GM and DNA results will be compared to data generated as part of the larger project in order to ascertain the degree of similarity of these early canids to the dogs and wolves from more recent contexts. These analyses will significantly advance our current limited understanding of the status of these remains, and certainly suggest whether dogs were domesticated nearly 20,000 years early than the currently accepted appearance of the first dogs.
Project Details: The PhD student will be jointly registered and supervised between the University of Aberdeen and Durham University (Archaeology Departments). An MoU already exists between the two Institutions in terms of official provision, supervision and award of a PhD programme. Data for this student project will be collected in tandem with the material required for the broader dog domestication baseline data collection and analyses.
Although some experience with either genetics, bioinformatics, zooarchaeology, evolutionary biology and/or morphometric techniques is ideal, the student will be given advanced training in all of these techniques by the project team, and will work closely with international collaborators. GMM training will take place at the Natural History Museum Paris, where formal courses in advanced morphometrics will also be offered. The tied PhD student will take part in the data gathering exercise across Russia and visit the key collections in Belgium and The Czech Republic. Training will also be offered through the respective University's Graduate School research training programmes which offer a broad range of training opportunities including: research skills and techniques, research environment, research management, communication skills, networking and team working and career management.
The student will also benefit from (and engage with) all aspects of the research environment provided by the senior steering committee meetings, project partner meetings, public engagement activities, including direct input into the website and project blogs and Facebook presence. They will be expected to present their findings at a range of conferences through both poster and paper presentations workshops and meetings that form part of the main research project.
For informal enquiries please contact Dr Greger Larson on +44 (0)191 334 1574 (email greger.larson@durham.ac.uk) or Professor Keith Dobney on +44 (0)1224 272634 (email: keith.dobney@abdn.ac.uk)
Related Links
Durham University, Department of Archaeology
(Image: © Michèle Ballinger, CNRS)