The Origins and Spread of Domestic Animals in Southwest Asia and Europe

Sue Colledge is a Research Associate at the University College London Institute of Archaeology, UK. Her research focuses on the archaeobotany of early prehistoric sites in southwest Asia and Europe, particularly the management and use of plants prior to and following the inception of Neolithic farming. She is the co-editor (with James Conolly) of The Origins and Spread of Domestic Plants in Southwest Asia and Europe. James Conolly is Canada Research Chair in Archaeology at Trent University, Canada. His research interests span archaeology and ecology, and he has published widely on the biogeography of early plant and animal domestication and on the application of spatial modelling and geographical information systems to archaeological and palaeoenvironmental datasets. He is the co-author (with Mark Lake) of Geographical Information Systems in Archaeology and the co-editor (with Sue Colledge) of The Origins and Spread of Domestic Plants in Southwest Asia and Europe. His current research focuses on early to mid-Holocene environments and archaeology in the lower Great Lakes region of North America. Keith Dobney holds the 6th Century Chair of Human Palaeoecology in the Department of Archaeology, University of Aberdeen, UK. For the last fifteen years he has been actively involved in developing and applying new techniques and approaches to the study of animal domestication and using the remains of domestic and commensal animals to explore the dispersal of early farmers across the Old World. He is currently one of two project leaders of a CNRS funded Projet de Groupement de Recherche Europeen (GDRE) entitled BIOARCH-Bioarchaeological Investigations of the Interactions between Holocene Human Societies and their Environments, and the director of a Co-Reach funded Chinese-European research network (EUCH-BIOARCH). He is a co-author of Pigs and Humans: 10,000 Years of Interaction. Katie Manning is a Research Associate at the University College London Institute of Archaeology, UK. Her research centres on livestock intensification and the ecology of early farming practices and the evolution of dietary specialisation in Neolithic Europe. She has also worked extensively throughout West Africa, focusing on the Neolithisation of the Sahara-Sahel borderland. She is the co-editor of African Pottery Roulettes Past and Present: Techniques, Identification and Distribution. Stephen Shennan is Professor of Theoretical Archaeology at University College London, UK and Director of the UCL Institute of Archaeology. His research focuses on the development and application of cultural evolutionary theory and methods to understanding the past. He is currently principal investigator on the project Cultural Evolution of Neolithic Europe, funded by a European Research Council Advanced Grant and was previously Director of the AHRC-funded Centre for the Evolutionary Analysis of Cultural Behaviour. His books include Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution (edited), Genes, Memes and Human History, and Quantifying Archaeology.