Robert Power

Robert Power is a Research Fellow in the School of Archaeology at University College Dublin and an associate of the Earth Institute. His research reconstructs ancient diets using plant microremains preserved in dental calculus and sediments to understand how plant consumption shaped hunter-gatherer and early farming societies.

Power specializes in phytolith and starch grain analysis to examine subsistence strategies across human evolution. His current projects include studying dietary diversity during Europe's Neolithic transition, funded by an Irish Research Council-Science Foundation Ireland grant. This work integrates microbotanical analysis, lipid biomarkers, and paleoproteomics from archaeological dental calculus.

His publications demonstrate methodological innovation in microremain analysis, including studies on phytolith morphometry standardization and synchrotron-based dental calculus examination. Research spans Neanderthal plant utilization in Iberia to chimpanzee dietary patterns in the Taï Forest.

Power serves on committees including the Environmental Archaeology in Ireland conference committee and International Society for Ancient Starch. He coordinates the 'Understanding Human Origins' module at UCD, combining archaeology, paleoanthropology, and genetics.