Joe Mezza is an MSc student in the Archaeological Sciences and Human Evolution (ASHE) program at the University of Tübingen and a research assistant (HiWi) with the Geogenomic Archaeology Campus Tübingen (GACT). In 2023, he received a BSc from Rutgers University (NJ, USA) with evolutionary anthropology and history as major subjects and archaeology and Earth science as minor subjects. His master’s studies in Tübingen are supported by a Fulbright Open Study/Research scholarship. He has archaeological field experience ranging from survey work in Pennsylvania, USA to excavations at Paleolithic cave sites in Portugal, Spain, and Serbia. His laboratory experience includes geoarchaeological and archaeobotanical work in academic and professional settings, and he is currently being trained in paleogenetic laboratory methods at the University of Tübingen.
Joe’s tasks as a research assistant include aliquoting sediment samples for DNA extraction and helping to maintain databases used by GACT and the University of Tübingen’s Archaeo- and Paleogenetics Group. For his master’s thesis, he plans to use paleogenetic and geoarchaeological data to investigate aDNA preservation within the sediments of Mala Pećina, a cave in Serbia currently under study by GACT in collaboration with the University of Belgrade.
This is our new „Hiwi“
