Emily Coco

Celebrating the women at ICArEHB, then and now.

From childhood curiosity to careers uncovering the past, we’re proud of the women shaping archaeology at ICArEHB.

Happy International Day of Women and Girls in Science 💜
#WomenInScience #EveryVoiceInScience #11February

The handaxe enigma continues!

Brand-new method shows: one can shape a handaxe without cultural models. Paper open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440326000154

🎓 FCT PhD Fellowships 2026
ICArEHB invites inquisitive and motivated candidates to pursue a PhD in Prehistoric Archaeology or Primatology through the national FCT Program.
📍See our poster & details: www.icarehb.com/fct-phd-fell...
#PhD #Archaeology #FCT #ICArEHB

👾🏺 This week we are hosting a week-long #DigitalArchaeology #maintainathon, an opportunity to clean, document and revise older code together!

If you’re a #ComputationalArchaeology *st take this time to update your README, add code comments, write a unit tests or consolidate your project roadmap […]

Use-Wear Analysis Shows Changing Handaxe Grip and Use Across Time at la Noira (France) - Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology Handaxes — sub-oval bifacially flaked stone tools — were produced for over a million years across Africa, Europe, and Asia during the Lower Palaeolithic. Their relatively uniform shape across varied e...

The first article from my PhD results is now published — and it’s Open Access!
We show how handaxe grip and use evolved over time at La Noira (France).
doi.org/10.1007/s419...

#usewear #prehistory #handaxe #paleolithic #acheulean

Agent-based simulations reveal the possibility of multiple rapid northern routes for the second Neanderthal dispersal from Western to Eastern Eurasia Genetic and archaeological evidence imply a second major movement of Neanderthals from Western to Central and Eastern Eurasia sometime in the Late Pleistocene. The genetic data suggest a date of 120−8...

📢 New publication: "Agent-based simulations reveal the possibility of multiple rapid northern routes for the second Neanderthal dispersal from Western to Eastern Eurasia" by Coco, E. & Iovita, R., in PLOS ONE 20(6), e0325693 (2025).
🔗 More info: doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Our results show that Neanderthals likely dispersed via a northern route through the Ural Mountains and southern Siberia during warmer climatic periods (MIS 5e, MIS 3). Neanderthals could have reached the Altai relatively quickly by following river valleys.

New paper out with Radu Iovita in PLOS One modeling potential routes of dispersal for Neanderthals moving from the Caucasus Mountains to the Altai Mountains after MIS 6

doi.org/10.1371/jour...

A huge thank you to my coauthors: Patrick Schmidt, Bin Hu, Alice Rodriguez, Talgat Mamirov, Timothy Bromage, and Radu Iovita

A very exciting first post here: the final paper from my dissertation as finally be published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences! We characterized the processes of lithic artifact weathering at the Semizbugu site complex in Central Kazakhstan. Check it out here 👉 rdcu.be/d8NvQ