Oda Nuij is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Archaeology.

More information about Oda Nuij

Office days

Friday

Research

Oda Nuij is a palynologist and archaeologist specialised in prehistoric human-environment interactions.
The goals of Oda’s self-funded PhD research project “Quantitative vegetation reconstructions of archaeological sites” are threefold:
- to expand the application of models of pollen dispersal and deposition developed in palaeoecology to different archaeological contexts from north-western Europe.
- to show how quantitative vegetation reconstructions of archaeological sites can contribute to major archaeological debates on topics such as landscape formation, human niche construction, and (over)exploitation of natural resources.
- to improve the interpretation of palynological data from archaeological sites.
During the project, she will test methods of pollen modelling on four different case studies, ranging from the last interglacial Neanderthal influence on local vegetation at Neumark-Nord 2 to the human role in the formation of the archaeological landscape around Oss during the metal ages and roman period.

Curriculum vitae

Oda Nuij studied archaeology at Leiden University, with a focus on archaeobotany and European prehistory. For her BA thesis (2018), she analysed botanical macroremains from the Greek Middle Pleistocene site Marathousa to reconstruct the local vegetation and potential for plant exploitation by hominins.
In 2020, she completed her MSc (Research) cum laude with a thesis on reconstructing the late-prehistoric barrow landscape of Baarlo-De Bong in Dutch Limburg. She tested whether different methods of pollen modelling can be used on palynological data from burial mounds. The results showed that pollen modelling is a big step forward for the interpretation of palynological data from archaeological sites, providing new insights into the past local and regional vegetation development during the period of the formation of barrow landscapes. Oda was granted the Florschütz Award for best MSc thesis on palynology and palaeobotany written at a Dutch University in 2020-2021 by the Palynologische Kring of the Royal Dutch Geological and Mining Society (KNGMG).
Since September 2020 Oda works as a palynologist at RAAP Archeologisch Adviesbureau in Leiden.