Catriona Pickard

My research focuses on reconstructing past diets, subsistence strategies, human-environment interactions through stable isotope analysis, aDNA, and related biomolecular approaches. This work spans the Palaeolithic to the post-medieval period, with a particular emphasis on coastal and riverine adaptations, the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition, and long-term dietary change in Britain, Ireland, and wider Europe. With a background in science, I have embraced interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the past, integrating isotopic data from human and faunal and plant remains with archaeological, environmental, and historical evidence to address questions of adaptation and resilience, mobility, health, breastfeeding and weaning, and social inequality. I contribute to methodological advances in isotope applications, Bayesian mixing modelling (using FRUITS software), incremental dentine analysis, and multi-isotope database development as part of the Big Data initiative IsoMemo. I also lead a number of fieldwork projects (excavations and surveys) targeted at enhancing our understanding of the Lateglacial and Early to Middle Holocene periods in Scotland (in cultural terms, the Late Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic). These projects provide training opportunities for undergraduate and post-graduate students. Current research interests: 'The Real Palaeodiet' Modelling the diet of past populations to explore food choices and patterns of dietary change in populations in flux, through the analysis of bone chemistry (principally stable isotope ratio analysis). This research examinines the impact of climate and environmental change, mobility, migration and external cultural contacts on diet and dietary resilience. Big data in isotope archaeology. Through the creation of large reference datasets and meta-analysis levelling up the utility of multi-isotope data to inform on continental-scale and long-term trends in diet, migration, climate adaptation, and land use. Methodological advances in biomolecular approaches. Especially high-resolution methods of dietary modelling in past populations through advances in dentine increment analysis , critical reflection on current approaches to modelling diet (i.e., the use of Bayesian vs frequentist statistical approaches), and also innovation in responsible and ethical destructive sampling. Investigating the prehistoric occupation of Scotland (and more broadly, Britain) through fieldwork and biomolecular analyses (including aDNA, stable isotope analysis and palaeoproteomics) with community-inclusive projects on the islands of Ulbha and Gometra, in the Inner Hebrides. A key aim of this research is to understand the lifeways of Scotland's late hunter-gatherers, an area that is relatively poorly known, and to evaluate the drivers of transitions (in diet, health, subsistence, social organization and inequality). A key area of interest is in deploying machine learning to expand knowledge of the Lateglacial and Mesolithic archaeological record.

Pickard C, Bonsall L, Soficaru A, Evans J, Boroneanț A, Bonsall C (accepted) Diet and mobility in the Danube Delta region in Late Antiquity: A multi-isotope approach. Pickard C et al. (accepted) Stable isotopic analysis of lambs' wool – detecting weaning effects. Haponava V, Pickard C,Fernandes R, 2026. The North-Eastern Europe and Northern Asia isotopic dataset of bioarchaeological samples (NEENA). Science Data. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-06477-5 Barlow A†, C Pickard#, L Fibiger, KL Sayle, S Schaeffer, E Smith, J Franklin, B Carter, L Perrino, C Bonsall, 2025. Cotton Town Blues: An Investigation of Social Inequality, Diet, and Health in a 19th Century Industrializing Population—St Peter’s Churchyard, Blackburn, Lancashire. Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints. 234. (# correspondin