About the Speakers:
Dr Jennifer Bates is an Assistant Professor of Archaeological Science at Seoul National University's Dept. of Archaeology and Art History. Dr Bates is an archaeobotanist with a special interest in the Indus Civilisation of South Asia. She has also worked on material from other regions and time periods. Dr Bates' Indus research focuses on how we can address broader social, cultural and environmental questions such how societies were internally organised, how villages and cities interacted during periods of urbanisation and deurbanisation, what happens when cultures meet and interact, and how people reacted during periods of climatic instability, through analysis of the basic universal factor of life: food. Her PhD work (University of Cambridge) explored whether village life was affected by the rise and fall of urban centres in northwest India c.3200-1500BC.
Dr Brad Chase is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Albion College in the US state of Michigan. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison under the supervision of Dr. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer. He has worked closely with archaeologists from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda for over 20 years and is currently continuing research with archaeologists from the University of Kerala. His research has focused on studies of animal bones and archaeological chemistry from Indus Civilization archaeological sites in Gujarat.