For bioarchaeologist and recent Dan David Prize winner Dr. Efthymia Nikita it all began, as it often does in archaeology, with a bit of bone. A cow tooth to be more precise. And then with a full human skeleton.

As an undergraduate student at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Nikita was taking part in an excavation at a Neolithic site in northern Greece when the dig’s zooarchaeologist was called on to analyze a tooth which had been uncovered.