Janz, Lisa

Environmental Archaeology, Northeast Asia. The youngest daughter of Vancouver urbanites turned subsistence farmers, I was raised in a community of 500 people in rural Nova Scotia. Succoured on fantasy books and World Book Encyclopaedia Science Year reports, I became interested in archaeology early on, but ophidiophobia dampened my enthusiasm. I dabbled in various trades over the years, such as fashion designer, beekeeper, and coffee barista until at 20 I realised the relative advantages of moving to Montréal to become a student. At McGill University, I became interested in the archaeology of East Asia, particularly that of Central Asia and Mongolia. In 2002, I worked as a field school student on an Eneolithic cemetery with the Baikal Archaeology Project. Growing accustomed to the life of travel and adventure I decided to pursue graduate studies.

My PhD research is aimed at using museum collections made during major early 20th century scientific expeditions in the Gobi Desert to reconstruct the chronology of Gobi Desert land-use from the terminal Pleistocene to middle Holocene, considering the relationship between such hunter-gatherers and the spread of food producing economies in Mongolia and China. My research is based on an examination of the relationship between human food choice and changes in the distribution of local resources due to regional ecological expressions of post-glacial climate change. An ongoing international, collaborative project aimed at AMS radiocarbon dating of Northeast Asian ostrich eggshell and pottery will complement this work by providing dates for some of the numerous undated surface assemblages in Gobi Desert prehistoric collections.

I am also trained in zooarchaeology and have worked on historic and prehistoric assemblages from 3 continents in the context of both mortuary and household archaeology.

Research Interests:
Pottery use among mobile foragers; use of wetlands and importance of "high cost, low return" food sources; transition to nomadic pastoralism; innovative use of museum collections; dating surface sites; Pleistocene extinctions their relationship to post-glacial ecology and shifts in human subsistence

Selected Publications:
Janz, L., Elston, R. G., Burr, G. S. “Dating North Asian Surface Assemblages with Ostrich Eggshell: Implications for Palaeoecology and Extirpation,” Journal of Archaeological Science (2009), doi:10.1016/j.jas.2009.05.012. (http://anthropology.arizona.edu/ljanz, 2013-05-17)