J.A.M. (Jolijn) Erven, MSc

Disentangling the Complex Domestication Processes of Pig and Cattle by Means of Palaeogenomics.

Jolijn Erven is a PhD candidate in the project 'The Emergence of Domesticated Animals in the Netherlands' (EDAN), a 3-year project funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Her research aims to disentangle the complex story of pigs and cattle in the Netherlands and move beyond the wild-domestic dichotomy, which has been rendered problematic due to hybridization between cattle and pig and their wild counterparts. Her aim is to examine signatures in the ancient DNA of pig, cattle and their wild counterparts. One of the goals is to pinpoint the amount of original Anatolian DNA and European wild boar DNA present, in order to estimate the degree to which this hybridization occurred. These issues will be explored by bioinformatic, zooarchaeological, population genetics, and ecological analysis