Ayushi Nayak
Main Focus
Ayushi is a PhD Student at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. Her research focusses on the nature of the different trajectories of human activities in prehistory that have led to the hyper-diversity that defines the Indian sub-continent today. Through the application of biomolecular approaches, her work explores different aspects of the human past in South Asia, such as diet, early farming strategies, population movement, and inter-cultural interactions. In addition to this, Ayushi is interested in approaches to decolonising archaeological and anthropological theory, public engagement with cultural heritage, and humanist perspectives on integrating scientific method with social theory.
Curriculum Vitae
Ayushi Nayak received her BA in Archaeology and Anthropology from the University of Oxford. Her dissertation, 'A Stable Isotope Approach to Farming Ecologies in the Indian Neolithic-Chalcolithic', was the first study to apply stable isotope methods to human, faunal, and botanical remains from prehistoric India.
Publications
Nayak, A., Basa, K. K., Boivin, N. L., Fuller, D. Q., Mohanty, R. K., Kingwell-Banham, E., Murphy, C., Roberts, P. J., Lee-Thorp, J., Bogaard, A. 2022. A stable isotope perspective on archaeological agricultural variability and Neolithic experimentation in India, Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 141, 105591, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2022.105591.
Nayak, A., Boivin, N. L., and Roberts, P. 2022. Multidisciplinary Perspectives on the Origins of Past Foodways and Farming Practice in South Asia. Archaeology of Food and Foodways, 1(1), 54–84. https://doi.org/10.1558/aff.13983
Spengler III, R. N., Tang, L., Nayak, A., Boivin, N. L., and Olivieri, L. M. 2021. The Southern Central Asian Mountains as an ancient agricultural mixing zone: new archaeobotanical data from Barikot in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. Vegetational History and Archaeobotany 30, 463–476. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-020-00798-8
Lucas Stephens, Dorian Fuller, Nicole Boivin, Torben Rick, Nicolas Gauthier, Andrea Kay, Ben Marwick, Chelsey Geralda Armstrong, C. Michael Barton, Tim Denham, Kristina Douglass, Jonathan Driver, Lisa Janz, Patrick Roberts, J. Daniel Rogers, Heather Thakar, Mark Altaweel, Amber L. Johnson, Maria Marta Sampietro Vattuone, Mark Aldenderfer, Sonia Archila, Gilberto Artioli, Martin T. Bale, Timothy Beach, Ferran Borrell, Todd Braje, Philip I. Buckland, Nayeli Guadalupe Jiménez Cano, José M. Capriles, Agustín Diez Castillo, Çiler Çilingiroğlu, Michelle Negus Cleary, James Conolly, Peter R. Coutros, R. Alan Covey, Mauro Cremaschi, Alison Crowther, Lindsay Der, Savino di Lernia, John F. Doershuk, William E. Doolittle, Kevin J. Edwards, Jon M. Erlandson, Damian Evans, Andrew Fairbairn, Patrick Faulkner, Gary Feinman, Ricardo Fernandes, Scott M. Fitzpatrick, Ralph Fyfe, Elena Garcea, Steve Goldstein, Reed Charles Goodman, Jade Dalpoim Guedes, Jason Herrmann, Peter Hiscock, Peter Hommel, K. Ann Horsburgh, Carrie Hritz, John W. Ives, Aripekka Junno, Jennifer G. Kahn, Brett Kaufman, Catherine Kearns, Tristram R. Kidder, François Lanoë, Dan Lawrence, Gyoung-Ah Lee, Maureece J. Levin, Henrik B. Lindskoug, José Antonio López-Sáez, Scott Macrae, Rob Marchant, John M. Marston, Sarah McClure, Mark D. McCoy, Alicia Ventresca Miller, Michael Morrison, Giedre Motuzaite Matuzeviciute, Johannes Müller, Ayushi Nayak, Sofwan Noerwidi, Tanya M. Peres, Christian E. Peterson, Lucas Proctor, Asa R. Randall, Steve Renette, Gwen Robbins Schug, Krysta Ryzewski, Rakesh Saini, Vivian Scheinsohn, Peter Schmidt, Pauline Sebillaud, Oula Seitsonen, Ian A. Simpson, Arkadiusz Sołtysiak, Robert J. Speakman, Robert N. Spengler, Martina L. Steffen, Michael J. Storozum, Keir M. Strickland, Jessica Thompson, T. L. Thurston, Sean Ulm, M. Cemre Ustunkaya, Martin H. Welker, Catherine West, Patrick Ryan Williams, David K. Wright, Nathan Wright, Muhammad Zahir, Andrea Zerboni, Ella Beaudoin, Santiago Munevar Garcia, Jeremy Powell, Alexa Thornton, Jed O. Kaplan, Marie-José Gaillard, Kees Klein Goldewijk, Erle Ellis. 2019. Archaeological assessment reveals Earth’s early transformation through land use. Science Vol. 365, Issue 6456, pp. 897-902. DOI: 10.1126/science.aax1192
Vagheesh M. Narasimhan, Nick Patterson, Priya Moorjani, Nadin Rohland, Rebecca Bernardos, Swapan Mallick, Iosif Lazaridis, Nathan Nakatsuka, Iñigo Olalde, Mark Lipson, Alexander M. Kim, Luca M. Olivieri, Alfredo Coppa, Massimo Vidale, James Mallory, Vyacheslav Moiseyev, Egor Kitov, Janet Monge, Nicole Adamski, Neel Alex, Nasreen Broomandkhoshbacht, Francesca Candilio, Kimberly Callan, Olivia Cheronet, Brendan J. Culleton, Matthew Ferry, Daniel Fernandes, Susan Freilich, Beatriz Gamarra, Daniel Gaudio, Mateja Hajdinjak, Éadaoin Harney, Thomas K. Harper, Denise Keating, Ann Marie Lawson, Matthew Mah, Kirsten Mandl, Megan Michel, Mario Novak, Jonas Oppenheimer, Niraj Rai, Kendra Sirak, Viviane Slon, Kristin Stewardson, Fatma Zalzala, Zhao Zhang, Gaziz Akhatov, Anatoly N. Bagashev, Alessandra Bagnera, Bauryzhan Baitanayev, Julio Bendezu-Sarmiento, Arman A. Bissembaev, Gian Luca Bonora, Temrilan T. Chargynov, Tatiana Chikisheva, Petr K. Dashkovskiy, Anatoly Derevianko, Miroslav Dobeš, Katerina Douka, Nadezhda Dubova, Meiram N. Duisengali, Dmitry Enshin, Andrey Epimakhov, Alexey V. Fribus, Dorian Fuller, Alexander Goryachev, Andrey Gromov, Sergey P. Grushin, Bryan Hanks, Margaret Judd, Erlan Kazizov, Aleksander Khokhlov, Aleksander P. Krygin, Elena Kupriyanova,Pavel Kuznetsov, Donata Luiselli, Farhod Maksudov, Aslan M. Mamedov, Talgat B. Mamirov, Christopher Meiklejohn, Deborah C. Merrett, Roberto Micheli, Oleg Mochalov, Samariddin Mustafokulov, Ayushi Nayak, Davide Pettener, Richard Potts, Dmitry Razhev, Marina Rykun, Stefania Sarno, Tatyana M. Savenkova, Kulyan Sikhymbaeva,Sergey M. Slepchenko, Oroz A. Soltobaev, Nadezhda Stepanova, Svetlana Svyatko, Kubatbek Tabaldiev, Maria Teschler-Nicola, Alexey A. Tishkin, Vitaly V. Tkachev, Sergey Vasilyev, Petr Velemínský, Dmitriy Voyakin, Antonina Yermolayeva, Muhammad Zahir, Valery S. Zubkov, Alisa Zubova, Vasant S. Shinde, Carles Lalueza-Fox, Matthias Meyer, David Anthony, Nicole Boivin, Kumarasamy Thangaraj, Douglas J. Kennett, Michael Frachetti, Ron Pinhasi, David Reich. 2019. The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia. Science Vol. 365, Issue 6457, eaat 7487. DOI: 10.1126/science.aat7487
Éadaoin Harney, Ayushi Nayak, Nick Patterson, Pramod Joglekar, Veena Mushrif-Tripathy, Swapan Mallick, Nadin Rohland, Jakob Sedig, Nicole Adamski, Rebecca Bernardos, Nasreen Broomandkhoshbacht, Brendan J. Culleton, Matthew Ferry, Thomas K. Harper, Megan Michel, Jonas Oppenheimer, Kristin Stewardson, Zhao Zhang, Harashawaradhana, Maanwendra Singh Bartwal, Sachin Kumar, Subhash Chandra Diyundi, Patrick Roberts, Nicole Boivin, Douglas J. Kennett, Kumarasamy Thangaraj, David Reich, and Niraj Rai. (2019). Ancient DNA from the skeletons of Roopkund Lake reveals Mediterranean migrants in India. Nature Communications 10, Article number: 3670. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11357-9.
Boivin, N., Fuller, D. Q., Korisettar, R., Nayak, A. and Petraglia, M. D. (2018). The emergence of agriculture and pastoralism in the Northern Maidan region of South Deccan South India. In Ravi Korisettar (Ed.), Beyond Stones and More Stones, Vol. II (pp. 95-126). The Mythic Society, Bengaluru.
Ventresca Miller, A., Fernandes, R., Janzen, A., Nayak, A., Swift, J., Zech, J., Boivin, N., and Roberts, P. (2018). Sampling and pretreatment of tooth enamel carbonate for stable carbon and oxygen isotope analysis. Journal of Visualized Experiments (138), e58002.