Dr Giuseppina Mutri

Giuseppina Mutri is currently Post Doc Fellow at the Cyprus Institute, where she is in charge of the study of dental calculus from different periods. Her previous research background focused on lithic technology and use-wear. Her experience on North African Prehistory began with her graduate dissertation on the lithic technology of the Upper Later Stone Age of Jebel Gharbi (Libya), where she also conducted extensive surveys for her PhD, working on the sourcing and characterization of lithic raw material for the same period.

At the same time, she had the opportunity to broaden her knowledge of the North African Stone Age by working in the Western Desert of Egypt. After her PhD she completed a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research (University of Cambridge), working on the project HUMANARIDADAPT, focused on human adaptation strategies across the Last Glacial Maximum in Cyrenaica, Libya. This experience was followed by a Research Associate position in the same Institute within the ERC funded project TRANSNAP, where her duty was the study of use-wear and residues on lithic artefacts from Middle Stone Age to Neolithic.

From 2017 to 2020 she was Research Associate within the ERC project “Hidden Foods” at the University La Sapienza of Rome and the same University. She was awarded a grant under the program Grandi Scavi Sapienza to conduct research at the stone age site of Melka Kunture, in Ethiopia as responsible for the Later Stone Age Archaeology.

She applied a multidisciplinary-based approach, by integrating my deep knowledge of lithic technology with use-wear and residues analysis, experimental archaeology and archaeobotany. The potential of this contribution to the understanding human behavior and subsistence strategies has significantly increased and the outcomes fully fits in the current debate about the role of plant-based foods in hunter-gatherers societies.