Ksenija Borojevic
Assistant Professor of Archaeology
Director of Undergraduate Studies

Education: PhD 1998, Washington University in St. Louis

Research Interests: Palaeoethnobotany, Ancient Diets and Environments, Archaeology of South and East Europe.

Dr. Ksenija Borojevic is an archaeologist and palaoethnobotanist. She is engaged in the variety of archaeological projects that explore past plant-human relationships. Her research has included systematic retrieval, laboratory analysis, and interpretation of macroplant remains from various archaeological sites in the Old World and the USA. She examines potential vegetation, different aspects of plant uses, agricultural practices, and wild plant procurement. In her research, she uses a wide range of methods, including archaeological fieldwork, laboratory analyses, and ethno-historic research.

Earlier in her career, Dr. Ksenija Borojevic primarily worked at the sites in Southeast Europe. During her graduate studies at Washington University, she participated in the excavations in the USA and in analyses of the artifacts from the sites in Illinois, Kentucky, and Missouri. As a postgraduate in the Army Corps of Engineering in St. Louis, she catalogued and rehabilitated archaeological collections from military installations in Alabama and Georgia.

Dr. Ksenija Borojevic has worked In the archaeobotanical laboratories in Europe and the USA, where she has identified plant specimens from sites in Arkansas, Illinois, Texas, the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Israel, ranging from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages. Prior to coming to Boston University, she was an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she continued to work on plant remains from the site Opovo in Serbia, Grapceva Cave in Croatia, and Megiddo in Israel.

Dr. Ksenija Borojevic has been the principal archaeobotanist for the Megiddo project in Israel, a multi-layer site occupied from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period (the seventh millennium B.C.E.) to the Persian period (the mid-first millennium B.C.E.) and for the Kedesh Project, a Hellenistic period multi-layer site in North Galilee. She organizes the retrieval and floatation of plant remains and palaeoethnobotanical analysis from the tell site Vinca in Serbia.

The courses that she teaches range from introductory archaeology and science in archaeology to more specialized courses in palaeoethnobotany, origins of agriculture, food in antiquity, and archaeology of Southeast Europe.

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS
Terra and Silva in the Pannonian Plain: Opovo agro-gathering in the Late Neolithic. BAR International Series, S1563, Archaeopress, Oxford 2006.

Nutrition and environment in medieval Serbia: charred cereal, weed and fruit remains from the fortress of Ras. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 14:453-464, 2005 (available also on line).

Archaeobotanical Finds. Chapter 27. In Megiddo IV: the 1998-2002 Seasons. Edited by Israel Finkelstein, David Ussishkin and Baruch Halpern. Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology University of Tel-Aviv No. 24, Tel-Aviv, pp. 519-541, 2006

The Transfer and History of “Reduced height Genes (Rht) in Wheat from Japan to Europe.” (together with Katarina Borojevic) Journal of Heredity Volume 96(4):455-459, 2005 (available also on line).

Historic Role of the Wheat Variety Akakomugi in Southern and Central European Wheat Breeding Program (together with Katarina Borojevic) Breeding Science 55:253-256, 2005 (available also on line).

Report on the Thirteenth International Work Group Symposium of Palaeoethnobotany, Girona, Spain, May 16-22, 2004. Society for Archaeological Sciences (SAS) Bulletin Vol. 7, No. 4, Winter 2004 (available also on line).

Water Chestnuts, Controversial Plants: Archeological and Ethnographic Evidence from Serbia and Monte Negro. Invited contribution to the Hillman’s Festschrift, edited by Andrew S Fairbairn & Ehud Weiss to be published in Oxbow Monographs, 2007 (forthcoming).

The Analysis of Macroplant Remains from the Fortress of Ras (the 12th and beginning of the 13th century). Starinar, Vol. LI/2000, pp. 191-205, 2003.