Patrice Bonnafoux: Hi Joelle, thanks for accepting this interview. Your topic of interest is one of the most fascinating avenue of archaeological and anthropological research but it is also one of the most challenging. Prehistoric pigments! How/why did you get yourself in there?
Joelle Nivens: Well, my interest in pigments actually came out of my interest and research into a completely different class of artifacts – beads.
Patrice Bonnafoux: Hi Michelle, lithic technology specialists are known as 'lithicists' so how do you call someone like you who is a specialist of antler, bone and ivory technology?
Michelle Langley: Well, you might call us an 'osseous technologist' or perhaps an ‘osseo-tech’. As someone who also works on shell and wooden technology, I like to think of myself as an ‘organic technologist’.
Patrice Bonnafoux: John, in the last few years, you've become one of the main players of the Peyre Blanque Archaeological Project, how did you get involved?
John O'Hara: Back in 2011, I was a grad student at New York University (NYU) and was trying to formulate a research project for my dissertation, and came to the realization that the Magdalenian was the period I needed to work on to address the types of question I'm interested in.
Patrice Bonnafoux: Hi Rachel, so you're the project micromorphologist, could you tell us what is micromorphology?
Rachel Kulick: Micromorphology is an approach to studying intact soil/sediment samples using microscopic techniques.
The purpose is to identify the different soil/sediment parts and other contextual materials (like pieces of human-made tools -yes, it was not only the men, fragments of food, etc.) and to recognize the relationships between these components.
