HYLAND Corrie

Dr Corrie Hyland is working as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Stable Isotopes at the University of York for the Seeing the Dead project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of UK Research and Innovation. She is analysing human remains from the gypsum burials of Roman Yorkshire using a comprehensive suite of isotopic techniques (carbon, nitrogen, sulphur, oxygen, and strontium, plus amino acid compound specific carbon and nitrogen) to reconstruct detailed dietary patterns and identify past mobility.

Past BAP research: Corrie Hyland began working with the BAP in Fall 2020 as part of her DPhil Archaeological Science research at the University of Oxford under the joint supervision of Drs. Amy Styring, Rick Schulting and Andrzej Weber. Specializing in stable isotope analysis, Corrie was working to further develop the freshwater reservoir correction methods that refine the microregion chronologies of Lake Baikal. She expanded on the use of stable hydrogen and sulfur isotope analysis, as well as applying compound-specific stable carbon and nitrogen isotope techniques. These additional results and new stable isotope methods provided increasingly quantitative measurements of the proportion of freshwater food in the diets of Lake Baikal’s ancient fisher-hunter-gatherers. Corrie’s work within the Baikal Archaeology Project was one part of her larger DPhil research that assessed methods of stable isotope analysis in addressing freshwater reservoir offsets in radiocarbon dating.

Research interests: Bulk and compound-specific stable isotope analysis, Radiocarbon dating, Life history reconstructions, Human–Animal relationships, Public Outreach