Courses and training materials
Below are a collection of summer schools, workshops, and online courses offering training in ancient biomolecules. If you have add additional resources to suggest, please send your suggestions to webmaster@isbarch.org.
Ancient DNA
PhD Summer School in Ancient DNA and Human History: This intensive one-week 140-hour course at the University of Copenhagen provides students with a broad introduction to the varied uses of ancient DNA in archaeology and hands-on experience working with high-throughput sequencing datasets. The course is composed of a series of lectures, covering a wide range of topics and hands-on computing practicals, and is primarily aimed at students in biology, archaeology, linguistics, and related fields who would like to learn more about ancient DNA applications in the post-genome era.
SPAAM “Introduction to Ancient Metagenomics” Summer School: The Ancient Metagenomics Summer School is a one-week 40-hour practical course, first taught and recorded in 2022. The course was taught by scientific staff at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and supported by the Werner Siemens Foundation, in collaboration with the Max Planck Harvard Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean (MHAAM), the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology, and the Jena School for Microbial Communications. All 2022 course materials (lectures, practicals, data) are available online under a Creative Commons license for independent learning: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6976712. The course will be offered again in future years. Follow the SPAAM Community for updates.
Workshop on Computational Population Genetics: Workshop held in 2019 at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. Although there are no immediate plans for offering the course again, the course materials are available online for self-study.
Ancient Proteins
Proteins from the Past: Palaeoproteomic Methods: This intensive one-week summer course at the University of Copenhagen will provide you with a detailed introduction to the methods used for mass spectrometry (MS)-based ancient protein sequencing, i.e. palaeoproteomics. The course will focus on the most advanced methodologies and applications of palaeoproteomics to palaeontology, palaeoprimatology and palaeoanthropology.
Stable Isotopes
IsoCamp: This two-week summer course at the University of New Mexico offers hands-on training in the application of stable isotopes to the biological, geological, and anthropological sciences. Offered annually.