Katrien Dierickx
Katrien Dierickx, 4-OCEANS, NTNU Vitenskapsmuseet, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
Research Interests
I am a post-doctoral researcher for 4-Oceans at NTNU since 2023. My background is in biology and archaeology, focusing on ecology and diversity, with a keen interest in the morphology and evolution of animals. I became interested in zooarchaeology and the past relationship between humans, animals and the environment during my masters, when I had the opportunity to identify different fish species from an archaeological site using comparative osteology. My interest in fish was further sparked as a research assistant to the MbiSa-Congo project (2017-2019), working on the diversity and ecology of modern African freshwater fish. I recently completed a PhD (2019-2022) in archaeology at the University of York (on medieval flatfish exploitation) as part of the SeaChanges Innovative Training Network, using comparative osteology, geometric morphometrics, and collagen peptide mass fingerprinting to identify the individual species and stable isotope analysis to infer catch habitats.
My research is multidisciplinary, combining several methods to understand the past relationship between humans and animals. For the 4-Oceans project, I will be analysing the impact humans could have had on marine taxa in the past using morphometric and geometric morphometric analyses. This will include measurements and 3D scanning of faunal remains from archaeological, historic and modern settings to compare geographical regions, chronological periods, and human exploitation strategies. We will combine the results from this research with the data collected from molecular analyses by other members of the 4-Oceans team to acquire an in-depth understanding of the history of our focus taxa during the past 2000 years. More specifically, I will be working on the Atlantic walrus and fish taxa within the project.
Publications:
Dierickx K., Wouters W., Van Neer W., 2017. Comparative osteological study of three species of distinct genera of Haplotilapiini (Cichlidae). Cybium, 41, 223-235.