Stephanie Wynne-Jones

[3-year funded PhD studentship with stipend covering maintenance and fee costs; immigration health surcharge and visa fees covered for non-UK citizens; fieldwork costs and selected conference attendance covered; maintenance payments also covered during parental leave.] This 3-year PhD studentship is part of the Zambezian Entanglements in the South-Central African Iron Age (ZAMBEZI) project, an ERC Advanced Grant project led from the University of Cambridge and carried out in collaboration with the National Museum of Zambia. The project is based on fieldwork in Zambia and Zimbabwe, with renewed excavations at Ingombe Ilede and exploration of a wider set of sites in Zambia and northern Zimbabwe. The advertised doctorate focuses on archaeobotany and the study of plant remains from excavation material. The selected student will work on data from flotation of material recovered from Ingombe Ilede and neighbouring sites, building evidence for plant use, agricultural practice, and landscape change in the South-Central African Iron Age. The project is designed to generate new data for key sites in a region whose archaeology is central to understanding second-millennium lifeways and connections. The student will be integrated into the wider ZAMBEZI research team and based at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge. The institute hosts a broad community of researchers working across global archaeology and heritage, providing a collaborative research setting for the project. Supervision is by Professor Stephanie Wynne-Jones and Dr Alexander Weide , with additional input from other department and institute members and external researchers according to training needs. The post is closely tied to ongoing fieldwork, excavation, and specialist analysis, offering a strong environment for a student interested in archaeological science and the interpretation of past plant economies and landscapes in south-central Africa.