Species identification and profiling in ancient bone by proteomics: From proof of concept to a new tool in archaeology

For at least 2.5 million years humans have processed the bones of animals to extract the fat-rich marrow and grease and to make objects. As a consequence, the archaeological/palaeontological faunal assemblages from most archaeological sites around the world contain large quantities of small unidentifiable bone fragments. This fact applies regardless of period or place, and constitutes a major loss of data on diet, environment and human-animal behaviour.
Identifying the presence, absence and relative abundance of animal species from archaeological/palaeontological sites informs us about the complex past relationships between humans and their surroundings. It provides information on site formation, food security and environmental conditions and change giving insight into food, shelter, transport, fuel, tools, clothing, ornaments and social identity. Methods such as DNA and proteomic analysis, suffer from a number of issues including poor preservation, high analytical cost, methodological weaknesses and poor reference databases. Therefore, a new methodology that address as many of these issues as possible is needed.
In this project the successful candidate will develop a bone protein database of the most commonly encountered animal remains from archaeological sites in Europe and southwest Asia for the past 40,000 years and further develop and implement a novel bioinformatics approach that matches protein sequences to known species in the new database. This will be done in a completely unique way following developments at the University of Liverpool through a collaboration of the Institute of Integrative Biology and the Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology.
The successful candidate should have, at least an Honours degree at 2.1 or above in biological sciences (or a closely allied area) with some experience in bioinformatics and computational coding and algorithms. A background or interest in bioarchaeology is desirable.