Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Katharina Rebay-Salisbury

 

Contact

Contact details and teaching directory

Supervised MA and PhD theses

Profile

Katharina Rebay-Salisbury is professor of Prehistory of Humanity at the University of Vienna and directs the research group ‘Prehistoric Identities’ at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Enthusiastic about the European Bronze and Iron Ages, her research focusses on combining interdisciplinary approaches for insights into people’s lives, identities and social relations in prehistory. Her current research explores themes such as sex and gender, motherhood, kinship, mobility and migration through ERC and FWF-funded projects analyzing burial contexts and human remains from Central Europe.

"It is important to me to make full use of the new possibilities of interdisciplinary bio-archaeology and to gain new insights into social relations of people in prehistory. In contemporary socio-political discussions on gender relations, family policy and migration, outdated visions of prehistoric and seemingly natural human conditions are often misused as political arguments, which can only be counteracted with correct data and exciting research." (Katharina Rebay-Salisbury)

 

Key Research Topics

  • Prehistoric Archaeology
  • Europe in the Bronze and Iron Ages
  • Archaeology of the human body and social identities
  • Gender archaeology, archaeology of motherhood, kinship analyses
  • Interdisciplinary bioarchaeology (anthropology, DNA, proteomics, isotope analyses)

 

Projects

2022-10-01 to 2023-03-31, Sex-based differences in Bronze Age childcare (FWF 1000 Ideas Programme, TAI 759)

2021-01-01 to 2024-12-31, Unlocking the secrets of cremated human remains (FWF stand-alone project grant P 33533)

2020-01-01 to 2021-12-31, Together in life - together in death: adults and children in Bronze Age graves (OeAD – Austrian Agency for International Cooperation in Education and Research mobility grant Nr. CZ 09/2020, with Klára Šabatová)

2016-07-01 to 2021-06-30, The value of mothers to society: responses to motherhood and child rearing practices in prehistoric Europe (ERC Starting Grant 2015, 676828)

2015-01-01 to 2017-12-31, The social status of motherhood in Bronze Age Europe (FWF stand-alone project grant P 26820-G19)

2009-02-01 to 2014-07-31, Translating art and craft: Human representations, identities and social relations in the Late Bronze and Iron Age of Central Europe (Leverhulme, component project of Tracing Networks F/00 212/AA)

 

Publications

Highlights

Haselgrove, C., Rebay-Salisbury, K., and Wells, P. S. (eds) 2023. The Oxford Handbook of the European Iron Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sørensen, M. L. S., and Rebay-Salisbury, K. 2023. Death and the Body in Bronze Age Europe. From Inhumation to Cremation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rebay-Salisbury, K., Bortel, P., Janker, L., Bas, M., Pany-Kucera, D., Salisbury, R. B., Gerner, C., and Kanz, F. 2022. Gendered burial practices of early Bronze Age children align with peptide-based sex identification: A case study from Franzhausen I, Austria. Journal of Archaeological Science 139: 105549.

Rebay-Salisbury, K., Dunne, J., Salisbury, R. B., Kern, D., Frisch, A., and Evershed, R. P. 2021. Feeding Babies at the Beginnings of Urbanization in Central Europe. Childhood in the Past 14, 2: 102-124.

 

Curriculum Vitae

since February 2023: Professor of the Prehistory of Humanity, Institute for Prehistory and Historical Archaeology, University of Vienna

since 2017: Head of the research group 'Prehistoric Identities' at the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

2017: Habilitation on 'Bodies, identities and social relations in Bronze and Iron Age Central Europe' (Venia legendi in Prehistory and Historical Archaeology), University of Vienna

since 2016: Member of the Young Academy of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

2015: European Research Council Starting Grant (The value of mothers to society: responses to motherhood and child rearing practices in prehistoric Europe, ERC Starting Grant 676828)

since 2015: Post-doc at the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences with own projects

2009-2014: Post-doc at the University of Leicester, UK, in the project 'Tracing Networks: Craft Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond'

2005-2008: Post-doc at the University of Cambridge, UK, in the project 'Changing Beliefs of the Human Body: a Comparative Social Perspective'

2004-2005: Research assistant (prae-doc) of the Prehistoric Commission of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

 

Academic Education

2001-2005 PhD, University of Vienna, Austria

1995-2001 MA, University of Vienna, Austria

 

Website content: K. Rebay-Salisbury, November 2023