Profile

Sophie is a doctoral candidate in anthropology, with interdisciplinary work in vertebrate palaeontology. They specialise in human-animal interactions, palaeoecology, biogeography, taxonomy, and functional morphology, in Southwest and Central Asia. 

               Their current archaeology research explores human-animal relationships, particularly commensal domesticates, and integrates human-animal studies, and social zooarchaeology. In their early research, Sophie examined anthropogenic impacts like farming on lithic assemblages, site distribution and erosion in coastal archaeology sites, and interspecies palaeopathology, focusing on diet and health in humans and their domesticates in island ecosystems. Additionally, they recovered osteological and microstructural markers for identifying and distinguishing species in highly fragmented bone material from Pacific archaeological contexts. Their vertebrate palaeontology research focuses on taxonomy, biogeography, and ecosystems in the Kochkor Basin in Kyrgyzstan, during the Late Miocene/Early Pliocene. This work examines carnivore biodiversity and ecology, endemism and species migration, and possible impacts of Tien Shan Mountain uplift. It is also currently one of the only formalised and published descriptions of fossil taxa from the Miocene in Kyrgyzstan.

               Sophie’s doctoral research explores the nature and antiquity of human-cat relationships. This includes theories of cat domestication, analysing temporal and spatial evidence for post-Pleistocene human-cat interactions across Southwest Asia and North Africa, and examining osteometric and morphometric differences between domestic cats and the wild subspecies. Their topical interests include vertebrate anatomy, functional morphology, palaeopathology, osteometrics, 2D/3D geometric morphometry, zooarchaeology, feminist theory and queer archaeology, human-animal studies, and data management.