Monica N. Ramsey
Assistant Professor
Anthropology
PhD., University of Texas at Austin, 2015
MA, University of Calgary, 2010
BA, University of British Columbia, Okanagan, 2007
Areas of Interest
Paleoethnobotany, microbotanical analysis, phytoliths, starch, starch spherulites, microcharcoal, residue analysis, plant-food processing, human-environment interactions, anthropogenic environments, niche construction, resource intensification, plant-food production, origins of agriculture, Southern Levant, Epipaleolithic
Research Interests
As an environmental archaeologist, with an expertise in microbotanical methods, phytolith, starch grain and starch spherulite analysis, and microcharcoal, I investigate how people used plants in the past. More broadly I study how people used, modified and ultimately constructed their environments and how this feedback impacts human experience and plant-use.
My early research includes investigating the development of hunter-gatherer plant-food production through macrobotanical analysis of Canadian Plateau earth ovens. I later developed an expertise in microbotanical analysis, employing phytolith analysis at several key Epipaleolithic (ca. 23-14.7 cal. BP) sites in the Levant (Israel and Jordan) to investigate hunter-gatherer plant-use throughout the climate fluctuations of the late Pleistocene. This research led me to consider the critical role of reliable resources, particularly wetland resources, to hunter-gatherer life-ways.
Building on this, my current project – Emergence – investigating wetland use and the long transition to agriculture in the Levant, employs a combination of microbotanical approaches (phytolith, starch and microcharcoal analyses), to investigate how increasingly anthropogenic wetland landscapes and the reliable resources therein may have influenced the evolution of plant-food production and the origins of agriculture through the Final Pleistocene into the Early Holocene (ca. 23-8 ka cal. BP).
More recently I have developed a research focus on early plant food processing and foodways, in particular the application of starch spherulites to archaeological contexts. This new archaeobotanical proxy has the potential to allow us to identify a range of processing activities, including baking, brewing and boiling of starchy plant foods deep into the archaeological past. I am also interested in the application of deep learning or AI to paleoethnobotany and more specifically, phytolith identification and analysis.
Previous Positions
2021 – 2022 Postdoctoral By-Fellowship, Churchill College, University of Cambridge
2020 – 2022 Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, McDonald Institute, University of Cambridge
2017 – 2020 Marie Curie Individual Research Fellow, McDonald Institute, University of Cambridge
2017 – 2020 Research Associate, Darwin College, University of Cambridge
2015 – 2017 SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto
Publications
Ramsey, M.N.
accepted Ecological-Cultural Inheritance in the Wetlands: The Non-Linear Transition to Plant-Food Production in the Southern Levant. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany.
Julien Vieugué, M.N. Ramsey & Yosef Garfinkel
2022 Plant cooking among the first pottery-making societies in the Southern Levant: an insight from carbonized residues of pottery. In Soultana Maria Valamoti, Anastasia Dimoula & Maria Ntinou (Eds.), Cooking with Plants in Ancient Europe and Beyond: interdisciplinary approaches to the Archaeology of Plant Foods. Sidestone press.
Berganzo-Besga I, H.A. Orengo, F. Lumbreras, P. Aliende, M.N. Ramsey
2022 Automated Detection and Classification of Multi-Cell Phytoliths Using Deep Learning-Based Algorithms. Journal of Archaeological Science.
Ramsey, M.N., and Dani Nadel
2021 A new archaeobotanical proxy for plant food processing: Archaeological starch spherulites at the submerged 23,000-year-old site of Ohalo II, Journal of Archaeological Science, 134:105465.
Arranz-Otaegui, A., L. Gonzalez Carretero, M.N. Ramsey, D.Q. Fuller and T. Richter
2018 Archaeobotanical evidence reveals the origins of bread 14,400 years ago in northeastern Jordan, PNAS.
Ramsey, M.N., A.M. Rosen, L. Maher, D. MacDonald and D. Nadel
2018 Sheltered by the Reeds: Construction and use of a twenty thousand year old hut according to phytolith analysis from Kharaneh IV, Jordan. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 50:85-97.
Ramsey, M.N., A.M. Rosen and D. Nadel
2017 Centered on the Wetlands: Integrating new phytolith evidence of plant-use from the 23,000-year-old site of Ohalo II, Israel. American Antiquity, 82(4):702-722.
Ramsey, M.N., A.M. Rosen, L. Maher and D. MacDonald
2016 Risk, Reliability and Resilience: Phytolith evidence for alternative ‘Neolithization’ pathways at Kharaneh IV in the Azraq Basin, Jordan. PLOS One.
Ramsey, M.N. and A.M. Rosen
2016 Wedded to Wetlands: Exploring Late Pleistocene Plant-Use in the Eastern Levant. Quaternary International, 396:5-19.
Ramsey, M.N., M. Jones, T. Richter and A.M. Rosen
2015 Modifying the Marsh: A Preliminary Evaluation of Early Epipaleolithic Hunter-Gatherer Impacts in the Azraq Wetland. The Holocene.
Laparidou, S., M.N. Ramsey and A.M. Rosen
2015 Introduction to the Special Issue: ‘The Anthropocene in the Longue Durée’. The Holocene.
Crumley, C., S. Laparidou, M.N. Ramsey and A.M. Rosen
2015 A view from the past and the future: concluding remarks on ‘The Anthropocene in the Longue Durée’. The Holocene.