Radu Iovita

I am a four-field trained anthropological archaeologist with broad interests in the archaeology of human evolution, human-environmental interactions, and stone tool technology. I came to NYU after eight years as a postdoc and eventually Senior Research Scientist at the Leibniz Research Institute for Archaeology in Castle Monrepos, Germany. I got my PhD at Penn under the late Harold Dibble, my Master's at Cambridge with Paul Mellars and my undergraduate at Harvard with Ofer Bar-Yosef (my more ancient academic kinship to be found at Anthropology Tree). Having participated in field projects all over the Old World, I eventually settled on doing my own research in the Eurasian loess steppe. In 2013 I completed a survey project in southeastern Romania and began work in Central Asia. I currently direct the European Research Council-funded PALAEOSILKROAD project in Kazakhstan, which investigates the role of geography and climate in Late Pleistocene human dispersals in central Asia. My Anthrotopography lab here at NYU tries to answer historical questions at different scales, using microscopes to peer into the forensics of ancient tool use and remote sensing to recover past landscapes. 

2008 PhD in Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania
2005 Complex Systems Summer School, Santa Fe Institute
2002 MPhil in Archaeology (with distinction), University of Cambridge
2001 AB (Hons.) in Anthropology (magna cum laude), Harvard University

Paleolithic archaeology, Human responses to environmental change, Eurasian loess steppe (Central Asia, Eastern Europe), Archaeological survey techniques, Lithics, Use-wear, Controlled experiments, Geometric Morphometrics

Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany (till January 2023)

European Research Council Starting Grant (2017-2022) 

ORCID | Google Scholar Profile

As editor (peer-reviewed) 

Marreiros, J., Pereira, T., and R. Iovita (Eds.) (2020) Controlled experiments in lithic technology and function, collection in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, Springer.

Iovita, R. and K. Sano (Eds.) (2016) Multidisciplinary approaches to the study of Stone Age weaponry, Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology, Springer, Dordrecht. 

Marreiros, J., Pereira, T., and Iovita, R. (Eds.) (in press) Controlled experiments in lithic technology and function, issue of Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, Springer.

Peer-reviewed articles 

Varis, A., Miller, C., Namen, A., Cuthbertson, P., Taimagambetov, Zh., Iovita, R., (2022) The effect of formation processes on the frequency of Palaeolithic cave sites in semiarid zones: insights from Kazakhstan. Geoarchaeology 37(4): 594-616.

Namen, A., Varis, A.,Taimagambetov, Z., Iovita, R. (2022). Preference for Porphyry: Petrographic Insights into Lithic Raw Material Procurement from Palaeolithic Kazakhstan. J Field Archaeology 47(7): 435-450. [postprint]

Iovita, R., Braun, D., Douglass, M., Holdaway, S. J., Lin, S. C., Olszewski, D., Rezek, Z. (2021) Operationalizing niche construction theory with stone tools. Evolutionary Anthropology 30(1):28-39.

Cuthbertson, P.P,Ullman, T., Büdel, C., Varis, A.G,Namen, A.G, Seltmann, R., Taimagambetov, Z., Iovita, R. (2021). Finding karstic caves and rockshelters in the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor using predictive modelling and field survey. PloS One 16(1): e0245170.

Schmidt, P., Rodriguez, A., Yanamandra, V. S. S. K., Behera, R., Iovita, R. (2020) The mineralogy and structure of use-wear polish on chert. Scientific Reports 10(1):21512

Coco, E., Iovita, R. (2020). Time-dependent taphonomic site loss leads to spatial averaging: implications for archaeological cultures. Humanities & Social Sciences Communications 7, 136.

Coco, E., Holdaway, S., Iovita, R. The effects of secondary recycling on the technological character of lithic assemblages. (2020) J Paleolithic Archaeology 3:453–474. [postprint]

Iovita, R., Varis, A., Cuthbertson, P., Namen, A., Taimagambetov, Zh., Miller, C. (2020) In search of a Paleolithic Silk Road in Kazakhstan. Quatern Int 559, 119-132. [postprint]

Schmidt, P., Blessing, M., Rageot, M., Iovita, R., Pfleging, J., Nickel, K.G., Righetti, L., Tennie, C. (2019) Birch tar production does not prove Neanderthal behavioral complexity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116 (36), 17707-17711.

Calandra, I., Schunk, L., Rodriguez, A., Gneisinger, W., Pedergnana, A., Paixao, E., Iovita, R., Marreiros, J. (in press) Back to the edge: relative coordinate system for use-wear analysis. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, Springer.

Pfleging, J., Iovita, R., Buchli, J. (2019) Influence of force and duration on stone tool wear: results from experiments with a force-controlled robot. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences. 

Gaudzinski-Windheuser, S., Noack, E.S., Pop, E., Herbst, C., Pfleging, J., Buchli, J., Jacob, A., Enzmann, F., Kindler, L., Iovita, R., Street, M., Roebroeks, W., 2018. Evidence for close-range hunting by last interglacial Neanderthals. Nature: Ecology and Evolution 2, 1087–1092. 

Fitzsimmons, KE, Sprafke, T, Zielhofer, C, Günter, C, Deom, JM, Sala, R, and R Iovita (2018) Loess accumulation in the Tian Shan piedmont: implications for palaeo-environmental change in arid Central Asia. Quaternary International 469:30-43.

Fitzsimmons, K.E., Iovita, R., Sprafke, T., Glantz, M., Talamo, S., Horton, K., Beeton, T., Alipova, S., Bekseitov, G., Ospanov, Y., Deom, J.-M., Sala, R., Taimagambetov, Z. (2017) A chronological framework connecting the early Upper Palaeolithic across the Central Asian piedmont. Journal of Human Evolution 113, 107–126. 

Iovita, R., I. Tuvi-Arad, M.-H. Moncel, J. Despriée, P. Voinchet, and J.-J. Bahain (2017). High handaxe symmetry at the beginning of the European Acheulian: the data from la Noira (France) in context. PLoS One 12(5): e0177063.

Pfleging J, Stücheli M, Iovita R, Buchli J. (2015) Dynamic Monitoring Reveals Motor Task Characteristics in Prehistoric Technical Gestures. PLoS ONE 10(8): e0134570. 

Iovita R., H. Schönekeß, S. Gaudzinski-Windheuser, and F. Jäger (2014) Projectile impact fractures and launching mechanisms: results of a controlled ballistic experiment using replica Levallois points. Journal of Archaeological Science 48: 73-83.

Iovita, R., A. Dobos, K. E. Fitzsimmons, M. Probst, U. Hambach, M. Robu, M. Vlaicu, and A. Petculescu. (2014) Geoarchaeological prospection in the loess steppe: preliminary results from the Lower Danube Survey for Paleolithic  Sites (LoDanS). Quaternary International 351:98-114.

Fitzsimmons, K. E., U. Hambach, D. Veres, and R. Iovita. (2013) The Campanian Ignimbrite eruption: new data on volcanic ash dispersal and its potential impact on human evolution. PLoS ONE.

Iovita, R., K. E. Fitzsimmons, A. Dobos, U. Hambach, A. Hilgers, and A. Zander. (2012) Dealul Guran: evidence of Lower Paleolithic occupation of the southeast European loess steppe. Antiquity 86(334): 973-989. 

Iovita, R. (2011) Shape variation in Aterian tanged tools and the origins of projectile technology: a morphometric perspective on stone fool function. PLoS One 6(12): e29029.

Iovita, R. and S. P. McPherron (2011) The handaxe reloaded: a morphometric reassessment of Acheulian and Middle Paleolithic handaxes. Journal of Human Evolution 61: 61-74. 

Iovita, R. P. (2009) Reevaluating connections between the Early Upper Paleolithic of Northeast Africa and the Levant: technological differences between the Dabban and the Emiran. In Transitions in Prehistory: Papers in Honor of Ofer BarYosef, J. Shea and D. Lieberman (Eds.), pp. 125-142. Oxbow Books, Oxford. 

Iovita, R. P. (2009) Ontogenetic scaling and lithic systematics: method and application. Journal of Archaeological Science 36(7): 14471457. DOI

Updated October 2022

[I am interested in accepting a PhD student for Fall 2023; see here for details]

I am currently wrapping up a major field project in Kazakhstan (PALAEOSILKROAD) and starting a large laboratory project to investigate the role of different material properties in the creation of lithic use wear.

Over the last six years, we have discovered 85 new caves and rockshelters all over the piedmonts of southern and southeastern Kazakhstan, as well as several new open-air Pleistocene archaeological sites. We conducted test excavations in several of them, confirming human presence in the area from at least around 50 thousand years (see here for one of many media stories about Tuttybulaq cave) until the beginning of the Holocene. We also shot a short documentary film, which will air later on this year on BBC Reel. We are currently applying for funding to excavate several of the sites, including the Tuttybulaq, Alpysbaev (Turkistan Province), and Aqtogai (Jambyl Province) Caves, and the open-air site of Tikenekti (Almaty province).

Back in New York, in the Anthrotopography laboratory we have focused on experiments to find out the role of different material properties in the formation of microscopic use wear on stone tools. Together with Alice Rodriguez and in collaboration with Kaushik Yanamandra and Rakesh Behera (Tandon), and Lukasz Witek (NYU Dentistry), as well as Patrick Schmidt (University of Tübingen) we published two papers examining fundamental aspects of polish formation (Schmidt et al., 2020; Rodriguez et al., in press), and we obtained a new NSF grant (2022-2024) to continue our work. AJ Crawford (CAS ’23) will also be revisiting an old question related to polish formation on stone tools used to work plants as part of his undergraduate thesis. We also added a new optical microscope (Zeiss Axio Zoom V16) to our equipment and are in the process of adding other analytical instruments as well. Finally, Prof. Emanuela Cristiani is visiting us this semester from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” to work on several.