Archaeobotanical fieldwork in Ukraine

Giedre Motuzaite-Matuzeviciute
PhD candidate, Department of Archaeology

I am currently working on a PhD thesis which explores the questions of when and how domesticated plants came to the European steppe regions. To address these questions, I am conducting excavations and flotation for archaeobotanical samples at a variety of sites in Ukraine and adjacent regions of Russia, in collaboration with Dr Sergei Telizhenko of the Crimean Institute of Archaeology. We have been excavating the following sites:

Zanovskoe
Tuba 5
Novoselovka
Starobelsk
Gard
Pechera
Buran Kaya 4
Razdorskoye

I am particularly interested in the possible corridors taken by millet as it spread across Asia and eastern Europe.

Post-season analysis of samples is conducted in the Pitt-Rivers Laboratory. Samples are being submitted for AMS dating, and we are carrying out complementary research on modern millet specimens to aid morphological interpretation.