Cynthianne Spiteri
Cynthianne is an organic residue analyst, who joined the ArchaeoBiomics group in 2022, after a previous visiting professorship at the University of Turin. Prior to joining, she was employed as a Junior Professor for Archaeometry at the Institute for Pre- and Protohistory and the Middle Ages at the Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen, were she is still affiliated as an Außerplanmäßiger Professor (Supernumerary Professor). She completed a two year post as a Post Doctoral Researcher within the Junior Research Group on Plant Foods in Dietary Ecology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, where her work focused mainly on the use of dental calculus for palaeodietary research and starch taphonomy. She was awarded her PhD in 2013 from the University of York, UK.
Her main research interests lie in palaeodietary reconstructions, particularly during transitory periods, and how these relate to, and shape the general health and social dynamics of a community. She is interested in technological transformation of animal and plant material used for dietary and non-dietary purposes, the introduction of new materials/foodstuffs in ancient communities and therefore the contact, trade and politics in place at the time. She is also interested in changes to the culinary repertoire over time, and how this is influenced by choice and availability. Cynthianne has also carried out several experimental projects, both in the field of residue analysis and plant microfossils. Her experimental focus lies in researching taphonomic processes of organic materials, and how these help us target and interpret scientific data obtained from archaeological contexts, as well as method optimisation and development, in particular in identifying new biomarkers, and therefore contributing to widening the field of biomarker research. She has, more recently, employed Sequential Thermal Desorption/Pyrolysis-Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry to the study of human dental calculus, as a source of palaeodietary information.
Fallen Kai Yik Teoh
Fallen is a biochemist, bioarchaeologist, and molecular biologist, who joined the ArchaeoBiomics group in 2022. Before moving to Turin, he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology, Jena, as the head of the Palaeoproteomics Lab. He received his PhD award from Macquarie University, Australia, for studying membrane proteins and protein-protein interactions in cyanobacteria.
He is especially interested in the methodological development of omics techniques, particularly proteomics for archaeology and palaeontology. He studies a range of biocultural materials. including human dental calculus, skeletal remains, mummified soft tissues, ceramics, textiles, and bird eggshells.
In 2023, Fallen was awarded a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions European Postdoctoral Fellowship for his bird evolution project. He will work on eggshells from diverse bird species to track the evolution of birds.
Alessia Monticone
Alessia is an archaeologist and museum conservator working on Object Biographies, and the integration of biomolecular approaches to the study museum collections.
Her background is in cultural heritage (BA University of Torino, Italy), she has an MSc in Underwater Archaeology (Università di Pisa, Italy) and a Specialization in Coastal Landscapes and Underwater Archaeology (Università di Sassari, Italy). Since 2013 Alessia is part of the Ministry of Culture, working at the Musei Reali Torino and currently is a PhD student of the Tech4Culture program (Università di Torino, Italy), supervised by Beatrice Demarchi and Enrica Pessione.
Alessia’s key focus is on the use of ZooMS (zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry) to improve the understanding of human-animal relationships in Piedmont, using legacy collections from the Musei Reali Torino. These include the study of osseous Longobard combs, but also the fauna from the Neolithic site of Chiomonte (APICI Project).
Carmen Domìnguez Castillo
Carmen is an environmental biotechnologist with a Ph.D. at the University Pablo de Olavide (Seville. Spain) in the field of evolutionary and molecular biology. The focus of her research has been around the origin and management of domesticated species in the Iberian Peninsula, among other topics, which she has investigated by means of paleoproteomics, with some incursions into metabolomics and lipidomics. She has developed solid skills in mass spectrometry techniques applied to species identification and to processes of diagenetic biomolecular degradation in archaeological materials.
Carmen joined the ArchaeoBiomics team in 2024 for a postdoctoral research track within the MALTHUS project, which is aimed at the rationalization of the collapse of the hyper-productive Terramare network of the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC in the Po plain. Her role in this project is to develop methods for the extraction of biomolecular fractions from dental calculus and their subsequent proteomic, metabolomic and lipidomic analysis with mass spectrometry approaches.