ArchaeoChats Ep 3: Dr. Julio Mercader, University of Calgary

Dr. Julio Mercader is an Associate Professor at the University of Calgary in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology. His research interests concentrate on assessing the ancient environments, diet, subsistence, and technological developments that contributed to early human evolution through the integration of biological sciences, geological research, and physiochemical characterisation of archaeological materials. He collaborates with the Department of Archaeology on numerous projects, including “Global Markers of the Anthropocene,” in which he focuses on microbotanical evidence of anthropogenic landscape modification. Julio is also the Principal Investigator of the Stone Tools, Diet, & Sociality at the Dawn of Humanity project, which includes researchers from the Max Planck to investigate how changing paleoenvironmental conditions influenced hominid dietary behaviour and stone tool technology development and use at Oldupai Gorge in Tanzania. In this interview, he discusses his 20+ year research career across Africa, his contributions to archaeological science, and how he would like to see the fields of archaeology and paleoanthropology progress in the coming years.