TAIPALE Noora

Biography

Career

Noora Taipale obtained her PhD at the University of Liège in 2020, and currently works at TraceoLab as an FNRS Postdoctoral Researcher. With a Master's degree from the University of Helsinki (Finland), she was initially trained in use-wear analysis of quartz at Uppsala University (Sweden) by Prof. Kjel Knutsson. In Liège, she has expanded the scope of her research first to the European Upper Palaeolithic and then to the Middle Stone Age and Early Stone Age of Africa. She wishes to use lithic functional analysis to understand past human adaptations and their diversity over space and time.

PhD research

Framed in the context of the ERC-funded project "Evolution of stone tool hafting in the Palaeolithic" led by V. Rots, Noora's PhD thesis "Hafting as a flexible strategy: variability in stone tool hafting and use at three European Upper Palaeolithic sites" was the first large-scale application of the hafting wear method on Upper Palaeolithic assemblages. The cave site Hohle Fels, the open-air site Maisières-Canal, and the rock shelter Abri Pataud served as case studies. The results allowed her to explain patterning in hafting with a reference to task mechanics, prehistoric subsistence strategies, mobility, and social division of work.

Postdoctoral research

After obtaining her PhD, Noora joined the project "Investigating the Deep Roots of Human Behaviour", led by Prof. Lawrence Barham (University of Liverpool, UK), V. Rots, and their co-investigators. As a member of an interdisciplinary team composed of researchers from several institutes in Zambia and Europe, Noora focused on stone tools from Kalambo Falls, a famous archaeological site that has yielded a rich lithic industry as well as wooden artefacts and structures dated to the Early Stone Age. Noora's  role in the project was to provide use-wear data on tool use and hafting at the site with the help of experiments carried out in collaboration with experimental archaeologists at TraceoLab and in the UK.

In 2023, Noora was awarded a three-year FNRS postdoctoral fellowship to carry out research on the Middle Stone Age in South Africa. Working in collaboration with colleagues from South Africa, Austria, and TraceoLab, she studies lithic material from the Howiesons Poort and post-Howiesons Poort layers of Klasies River Main site and Rose Cottage Cave. This period overlaps with Homo sapiens dispersals within and out of Africa. Noora wishes to understand changes in stone tool technology by paying special attention to processing and craft activities, to patterns in hafting, and to the effect of local geology on choices made by the prehistoric toolmakers and users.

As the sites Noora studies display a wide range of raw materials, her research includes a methodological component to investigate raw material properties and to expand the experimental use-wear reference collections to better cover African contexts. This will help interpret the rich and complex southern African archaeological record that preserves crucial information about the evolution of our species.