Katharina Rebay-Salisbury

Katharina Rebay-Salisbury is Professor of Prehistory of Humanity at the University of Vienna and directs the research group ‘Prehistoric Identities’ at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Enthusiastic about the European Bronze and Iron Ages, her research focusses on combining interdisciplinary approaches for insights into people’s lives, identities and social relations in prehistory. Her current research explores themes such as sex and gender, motherhood, kinship, mobility and migration through ERC and FWF-funded projects analysing burial contexts and human remains from Central Europe.

Recently she has led projects on gender aspects of childhood and burial practices in the Copper and Bronze Ages, making full use of new methods of child sex estimation. She is also interested in the position of children and their mothers in kinship networks, and the relationship between biological ageing and social age groups in the past.

It is important to her to fully utilize the new possibilities of interdisciplinary bio-archaeology and to gain new insights into social relations of people in prehistory. In contemporary socio-political discussions on gender relations, family policy and migration, outdated visions of prehistoric and seemingly natural human conditions are often misused as political arguments, which can only be counteracted with correct data and exciting research.

https://uha.univie.ac.at/en/about-us/staff-members/scientific-staff/university-professors/katharina-rebay-salisbury/