ASRYAN Lena

Biographie

Career

Lena Asryan obtained her PhD at the University of Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain) in 2015, and currently works at TraceoLab as a MSCA postdoctoral fellow.

She is a Quaternary researcher with more than a decade of experience in Palaeolithic archaeology. She has been involved actively in archaeological excavations since 2003, initially at the Azokh Cave international multidisciplinary project in Artsakh (Southern Caucasus) and has further developed her professional skills at other Middle to Late Pleistocene sites in Europe. Since 2019 she is co-directing an international project in South Caucasus assigned to the Atapuerca Foundation and funded by the Palarq Foundation.

PhD project

Lena¿s PhD research was funded by Wenner-Gren foundation and supervised by Dr Andreu Ollé (IPHES) and Dr Norah Moloney (UCL). The thesis entitled ¿Azokh Cave lithic assemblages and their contextualization in the Middle and Upper Pleistocene of Southwest Asia¿ in addition to the lithic techno-typology was focused also on a detailed macro- and microscopic description of raw materials used in stone tool manufacture (raw material survey, sourcing, characteristics, and preferences). Her PhD addressed, for the first time, also the function of the Azokh Cave¿s lithic artefacts through microscopic studies of use wear traces on archaeological flakes and experimental studies aimed at understanding and interpreting such traces. It was in that period when she started to develop a rising interest in micro-wear studies of volcanic rocks. Finally, post-depositional surface modifications [PDSM] of different origin (i.e. mechanical, chemical) affecting lithic artefacts were studied by designing and implementing different experimental programs and applying microscopic studies. The results of these studies allowed understanding the cave occupation patterns, and the behavioural and socio-economic capacities of hominins occupying the site. Finally, the study results enabled to place the occupation of Azokh Cave and its lithic assemblages in the context of the Middle and Upper Pleistocene of South-west Asia.

Postdoc project

After obtaining her PhD, Lena had several short-term post-doctoral contacts at the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES) and was involved in the techno-typological and microscopic studies of the lithic artefacts of Barranc de la Boella (Units II-IV, Lower Pleistocene to Middle Pleistocene) and Atapuerca (Gran Dolina site, layer TD10.2, Middle Pleistocene) sites.

Her current (MSCA) research project led by Dr Veerle Rots (TraceoLab ULiège) is focused on the study of functional and post-depositional surface modifications of basalt tools that is very little developed in her research area. The goal of the project is to fill in an existing gap in micro-wear studies of basalt artefacts by providing the necessary methodological framework to permit the functional analysis of basalt tools and by understanding past exploitation strategies of basalt, its functional significance and its interaction with other raw materials at specific archaeological sites in Africa, Europe and Asia where basalt is important. For this, she will design and implement a number of experimental studies mostly on function but also on post-depositional surface modifications on basalt tools adapting standardized wear analytical methods for basalt and combining different microscopic studies. She will work also on setting up a methodology for quantification of macro and micro-wear traces using 3D and 2.5D surface morphometry. During this project Lena will get full-training in systematic traceological studies experimental collection management and the acquirement of new skills in tool use, hafting and prehistoric projectile technology.