Dr. Meirav Meiri is a curator of Bioarchaeology and the Head of the Animal and Plant Ancient DNA Laboratory at the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History.
Dr. Meiri received her PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, supervised by Prof. Ian Barnes and Prof. Adrian Lister (both from the Natural History Museum, London). She then completed her postdoctoral studies at Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University.

Dr. Meiri primary interest is in paleogenetics as a powerful tool to address questions relating to evolutionary relationships of species, population movements, and the impact of environmental changes on demography over time.

 

Research Projects

• Taxonomy and population genetics of several locally extinct and extant Israeli species.
• Revealing lost diversity of Byzantine grapevines in the Negev Desert
• Unravelling the enigma of date palm cultivation in the southern Levantine region
• Modelling Anthropocene trophic cascades of the Judean desert ecosystem: a hidden dimension in the history of human-environment interactions
• Using Paleogenomics as a Tool to Identify the Contents of Ancient Pottery

Paleogenomics Laboratory

The Paleogenomics Laboratory at the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, opened in 2021, is a state-of-the-art clean room designed for the extraction and amplification of genetic material from a wide range of archaeological and museum specimens.

Courses

• “Quaternary Extinctions – Why? How many? Where? and how do we know it?”, The Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, Tel Aviv University, 2024.
• “Human and Animals relationship: bones & ancient DNA”, MSc. and PhD course, Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, 2021-2022.