Barbara Huber

Barbara’s doctoral research at the Max Planck Institute and the University of Tübingen investigates the global dimensions of the dispersal of ancient aromatics and spices throughout Asia and East Africa using biochemical and biomolecular analyses to characterize organic remains. Her current projects aim at reconstructing the use of smells and scented plants in the past using biomolecular profiling of plant secondary metabolites, lipids and proteins. In 2020, Barbara was awarded an Add-on Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Life Science from the Joachim Herz Foundation for her PhD research. She also won a 2022 AEA Small Research Grant awarded by the Association for Environmental Archaeology to fund her project titled “Reconstructing olfactory landscapes of ancient Arabia using biomolecular approaches”.