ELEA GUTIERREZ

Biography

Eléa obtained her B.Sc in 2017, from the University de Montréal (Canada) in Anthropology with a specialisation in bioarchaeology. During one of her undergraduate courses, she developed a personal interest in isotope studies of past population diets while carrying out a project on the reconstruction of dietary habits (δ¹⁵N and δ¹³C) of rural and urban populations from Quebec (16^th-18^th centuries). 

She then acquired her M.Sc in 2019 (first-class honours) at the University of Montreal. Her project was focused on differences in the weaning process between rural and urban past populations from Montreal (16^th-19^th Centuries) by micro-sampling of the dentine and isotope analysis (δ¹⁵N). While conducting her study, she was also involved in different projects, such as exploring the diet of a Huguenot population from a 17^th-century cemetery (δ¹⁵N and δ¹³C) and pursued a multi-isotopes approach on a First-Nation burial from Montreal to reconstruct his diet (δ¹⁵N and δ¹³C) and mobility (δ¹⁸O and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr).

In October 2019, Eléa began her Ph.D. research at the University of Aberdeen, funded by both the School of Geosciences and the School of Biological Sciences. Her project aims to better understand how dietary macronutrients influence nitrogen, carbon and sulphur isotope ratios (δ¹⁵N, δ¹³C and δ³⁴S) by using previous feeding experiments on mice with the manipulation of dietary macronutrient composition. This study brings new information on the comprehension of ancient human diets.