Dr Ceren Kabukcu

Ceren is a tenure track research fellow in Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, at the School of Histories, Languages and Cultures at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.

What attracted you to apply for a University of Liverpool Research Fellowship?

My experience at Liverpool during my PhD (2011-15) and Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2017-21) was a big part of why applied for this position: I knew that I would continue learning and developing at Liverpool. An additional factor was the emphasis on research excellence and ambition alongside a focus on inter-disciplinary, sustainable and responsible research practice (see Liverpool 2031 Strategy). This was a unique job advert, with excellence and track-record evaluated alongside the applicant’s vision on building a diverse, supportive and inclusive research environment. I saw this as aligning well with how I would like to shape the next decades of my research and a learning opportunity, and jumped.

What is your research about and what types of scientific techniques do you make use of?

I am an archaeologist who specialises in the identification and analysis of plant remains and their various traces recovered from archaeological habitations. My work focuses mostly on settlements located in Southwest Asia and the eastern Mediterranean: present-day Turkey, Greece, northern Iraq, etc. with habitation evidence that spans a relatively broad period from about 75,000 to 8,000 years ago. My interest, and what drives me to keep a relatively broad geographic and time-period focus, is to understand how our relationships with past environments and our food habits have shifted, adapted, and/or failed at various junctions of climatic, socio-cultural and economic changes in the past.

Through my work I aim to uncover how we have shaped our environments in the past, for example through managing past woodlands we relied on for our fuel and timber needs forming the origins of sustainable use of natural resources. As well as depicting past societies’ plant food choices and food preparation practices via microscopy, some of which is standard, but some involving specialised equipment such as Scanning Electron Microscopy, that allow us to see cell-level detail on carbonised fragments of seeds, tubers, and prehistoric food crumbs.

What or who first inspired you to be interested in your research subject?

Growing up, one of my biggest ambitions was to see the world and discover places and cultures that were different to mine. As an undergraduate student I discovered anthropology and archaeology allow you to do this in endless iterations: by traveling to different parts of the world in search of different cultures, whether present-day, historic or prehistoric and by discovering and documenting the traces of people in the past to understand their lifeways. What initially attracted me to archaeology was the possibility of exploration and how it fosters a reflection on our current way of life. Over the years through my work, I’ve travelled to many different places and made friends, formed collaborations with people from different corners of the world, and learned to embrace adaptability as one of the super-powers of being human.

What are you most proud of achieving during your research career so far?

I fear I have so much more to achieve before I can answer this question truthfully- perhaps you would be interested in a catch-up close to my retirement some decades later? Beyond research outputs I have produced, or other achievements we typically list on CVs, I am most proud of the collaborations I have built, and people I have been able to support in their own research journeys.

Which other subjects are important for your research?

Having expertise, or at least some level of familiarity with techniques from other disciplines is a common occurrence in archaeology, and for the simple reason that we have to deal with all traces of past human activity from the biomolecular level to objects. In my work, I rely on botanical and plant anatomical descriptions and depictions of present-day plant specimens to narrow down possible plant species identification of past materials. As a result, to carry out even the baseline plant identifications from archaeological sites, I have studied plant anatomy, wood anatomy and the responses of wood tissue formation under different climatic and habitat conditions, seed morphology, etc. But we have our own sets of criteria and descriptions because the remains that survive for several thousand years in archaeological sites reflect different states of preservation. I deal predominantly with carbonised plant remains (they look similar to barbeque charcoal or burnt crumbs left behind in the bottom of toaster trays). Beyond these, I remain equally interested in understanding the past environmental conditions and shifts in climate and aim to keep up to date with work on this both from archaeological specialists and from colleagues in the Environmental Sciences and Palaeoecology. My work on plant cooking practices and uncovering the traces of these on archaeological remains, take me into work being done in the Food Sciences.

What is the key to running a successful research project?

I would argue that what makes research more productive, enjoyable, and manageable is teamwork. The outcomes of our findings and research projects are often unpredictable or may take longer than planned. Working as a team, especially when this can foster input from diverse viewpoints, experiences, and expertise while relying on collective responsibility can ease the burden. Whenever I am on archaeological fieldwork, whether that is to participate in excavation or sampling of plant remains from archaeological sites, I get to be part of a team. Together we achieve so much more than when we work alone.

How do you plan to develop your research in the future?

I am working towards building my own team at Liverpool with support from several colleagues based here and abroad. I hope to be able to bring together a group that will allow us to launch an inter-disciplinary investigation into the role of plant foods in Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer nutrition, the early development of cooking technologies, and how plant foods played a key role in the creation of cultural identities through cuisine.

What advice would you give to someone considering a career in research?

In my experience a career in research enables you to be an equal partner in the pursuit of knowledge and discovery. We all bring something unique to the academic and research landscape, so I would encourage anyone considering a career in research to pursue this goal without prejudice of outcomes. Some things are incredibly useful, such as having a good support network whether that is friends, family, or professional mentors. I am told by colleagues with many more years of experience, the rest is a lifetime pursuit of learning, trial, error, and success.

Where can readers learn more about your research?

Learn more about Ceren Kabukcu and some bite-size writing on Palaeolithic ‘food crumbs’ in The Conversation.