Team
Joanna Ostapkowicz is principal investigator on jagWARS, and Research Associate in Caribbean Archaeology at the School of Archaeology, University of Oxford. Her research focuses on bringing a wide span of analytical techniques to better understand the chronological range, materials and provenance of circum-Caribbean artefacts in museum collections. She has been principal investigator on several international, multidisciplinary research projects that bridge the arts and sciences, including Pre-Hispanic Caribbean Sculptural Arts in Wood (funded by the Getty Foundation and British Academy), Black Pitch, Carved Histories: Prehistoric wood sculpture from Trinidad's Pitch Lake (Arts and Humanities Research Council [AHRC], UK) and SIBA: Stone Interchanges in the Bahama Archipelago (AHRC; https://siba.web.ox.ac.uk)
It has been her long term goal to study the remarkable collections that are at the core of jagWARS.
Fiona Brock is Reader in Analytical and Archaeological Science at Cranfield Forensic Institute, where her research focuses on the identification and preservation of organic materials in the archaeological record. As part of jagWARS, she will be advising on 14C dating strategies (especially for samples with unknown conservation histories) and identification of resins and pigments.
Christophe Snoeck is Professor in the Analytical, Environmental and Geo-Chemistry Research Unit, Department of Chemistry, Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He specialises in isotope analyses of archaeological remains and artefacts. Within the jagWARS project, he will carry out strontium isotope analyses of the different artefacts to identify their geographical origin. Particular care will be taken to minimalize sample size and remove conservation agents that might have been applied to the artefacts.
Alex C. Wiedenhoeft is a Research Botanist and Team Leader in the USDA Forest Products Laboratory’s Center for Wood Anatomy Research. His research program emphasizes botanical wood anatomy, forensic wood science, and biocentric wood science. He holds academic positions at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, Purdue University, Sao Paulo State University- Botucatu, and Mississippi State University. He is an elected Fellow of the International Academy of Wood Science, a Deputy Executive Secretary of the International Association of Wood Anatomists, and an Associate Editor for the IAWA Journal. Within the jagWARS project he will conduct forensic identification of the woods used in the artefacts and seek to understand the material knowledge implicit in those wood choices.
