진학프로석·박사 채용 접수 플랫폼

The Unité Mixte de Recherche 5199 PACEA of the CNRS, Univ. Bordeaux, offers a two-year funded postdoctoral fellowship for the European Research Council Starting project EXOSTECH "Revealing the functions of Pleistocene Expedient Osseous Technology with an innovative approach that integrates tribology with AI". The fellowship will ideally start on 1st January, 2026.

The UMR5199 PACEA is a joint research unit attached to the CNRS, the University of Bordeaux and the Ministry of Culture. Its research focuses on the evolutionary, cultural and symbolic history of past populations in relation to environmental changes from the origin of the genus Homo to very recent periods. This very broad theme is based on a wide range of specialists including archaeologists, bio-archaeologists, funerary archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, paleontologists, prehistorians, archaeozoologists, paleogeneticians, geoarchaeologists and geologists.

The ERC StG ExOsTech project
Background
Over the past two decades, growing evidence indicates that the use by members of our lineage of unmodified or partially modified bone fragments preceded the emergence of fully shaped, standardized bone tools. But what were the major tipping points in their origin and development? And how did they contribute to the emergence of fully shaped, standardized bone tools? It is believed that these rudimentary tools, some of which date back to 2.4 million years ago (Myr), were used to dig, pierce, cut, or scrape.

However, due to the lack of precise means to investigate these artifacts, it is difficult to reach definitive conclusions regarding their use. The development of replicable quantitative methods to infer their role in past cultural systems would allow a thorough documentation of their evolution in relation to other aspects of Pleistocene material culture. The objective of EXOSTECH is to fill this gap.

The methodology is based on the development and application of innovative principles such as the integration of tribology with artificial intelligence to study use-wear patterns present on expedient osseous tools. This methodological breakthrough relies on discriminant analysis of surface textural data (ISO 25178 and SSFA) acquired by confocal microscopy combined with image recognitions and multi-class neural network algorithms. We propose to apply this emerging method to study samples from Europe, South Africa, and East Asia dated between 1.8 Ma and 60 thousand years ago (ka). Cross-cultural comparisons of regional trajectories will help pinpoint :

1. when expedient osseous tools became fully integrated in past cultural systems and
2. when standardized behaviours guiding their selection and use emerged in our lineage.

Highly interdisciplinary, this project will involve senior researchers, post-docs, PhD students and research engineers as well as collaborations with five research institutions (Univ. Witwatersrand, Univ. Johannesburg, TraCEr Laboratory – MONREPOS, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and
Paleoanthropology, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research). The post-doctoral researcher in Bordeaux will contribute to this endeavor by conducting experimental and neotaphonomic research on the development, stabilization and preservation of use wear patterns on expedient bone tools, and compare the experimental results with faunal assemblage from Southern and Eastern Africa, dated to the Gelasian and the Calabrian.
The research will involve microscopic analysis of archaeological, ethnographic and experimental objects using confocal microscope, the application of multivariate statistical analyses of surface texture parameters and image recognition algorithms. The results will be interpreted in the light of theoretical models and scenarios on the evolution of material culture, environmental changes and the cognitive abilities inferred
for the members of our lineage.

Main tasks
1. Design and implement neotaphonomic experiments to investigate the preservation of use wear
patterns in glacial environments.
2. Perform qualitative and quantitative use wear study of expedient osseous tools from Southern and
Eastern Africa.
3. Contribute experimental, neotaphonomic and archaeological data to an Atlas of Use Wear on
Expedient Osseous Tools (i.e., the ExOsTechBank).
4. Disseminate the results via journal articles, conferences, and initiatives targeting a large public.