Main Focus
- - Archaeobotany and crop diffusion in Central Asia (including Silk Road exchange)
- - Domestication, cultivation, and dispersal of woody perennial fruit crops
- - Impacts of political instability and climate/environmental change on agricultural systems
- - Experimental archaeology and development/testing of biomolecular methods in archaeology
Curriculum Vitae
Basira Mir Makhamad is a Central Asian archaeobotanist and researcher specializing in the study of ancient agriculture and plant domestication, particularly in Central Asia. She received her PhD at the the Friedrich Shiller University in Jena in 2024. Her thesis was about crop diversification in southern central Asia during the first millennium CE. Her academic training includes anthropology and archaeological materials science from institutions across Europe (including Hercules Laboratory in Portugal, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, Sapienza University of Rome in Italy, and Vilnius University in Lithuania).
As a postdoctoral researcher, she extends her expertise by working with plant stable isotopes and fecal biomarkers such as bile acids. In addition to expanding her methodological toolkit, she has broadened the regional and chronological scope of her research, with a particular focus on the Mongol periods. Since 2023, she has been a member of the Crop History Consortium, where she works on historical crop diffusion and crop evolution. In 2025, Basira Mir Makhamad was awarded the prestigious Otto Hahn Medal by the Max Planck Society for her innovative archaeobotanical research on ancient agricultural systems in Central Asia.
Publications
Mir-Makhamad B*, Larsen T, Vassão D., Spengler R,
Wang Y., (2025 ) Bile acids as biomarkers in carbonized archaeological
sediments: Insights from dung burning experiments. Plos ONE
Mir-Makhamad B*, Bjørn R, Boxleitner K, Spengler R (2024) The Cotton Road: A History of Cotton in Central Asia. Inn Asia 26:
More: Researchgate