WHITE J. Alyssa

J. Alyssa White is presently a Research Affiliate of the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Alyssa recently successfully defended her DPhil researching skeletal evidence for prehistoric violence from the southwestern Japanese archipelago during the end of the hunter-gatherer period through the early agricultural period (ca. 1300 BC – 250 AD). She was supervised by Dr. Rick Schulting and Dr. Mark Hudson at the University of Oxford.

Alyssa’s Master of Science (MSc) research, supervised by Dr. Rick Schulting at the University of Oxford, focused on stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic and radiocarbon analysis of prehistoric hunter-gatherers from Cis- and Trans-Baikal, Siberia, Russia. The aim of her research was to expand upon the extensive chronological assessment and dietary analysis that has been carried out in the Lake Baikal region by targeting areas and periods that had previously been underrepresented (i.e. the Upper Lena micro-region, the Late Neolithic in the Little Sea micro-region, and the previously unanalysed Trans-Baikal) in order to refine the understanding of diet and contact at a larger regional and finer temporal scale. Alyssa completed her MSc in 2016.

RESEARCH INTERESTS: Stable isotopic analysis, Palaeodietary reconstruction, Radiocarbon dating, Skeletal trauma, Prehistoric violence, Japanese archaeology, Transitions to agriculture, Human growth and development