Jingchao Chen is a PhD candidate at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She acquired her master’s degree in Ancient Near East History and Archeology at Tel Aviv University, where she gained field experience and developed interest in archeological science. Having received organic residue analysis training in the laboratory at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, she did her MA thesis on “Tracing Household Behavior in Iron Age IIC Tel Hadid and Tel Beth-Shemesh: A Pilot Study with Organic Residue Analysis on Pottery Assemblages.”

She will contribute to “The Wall” project by analyzing the potteries from Mongolia Expeditions using ORA: check the condition of lipid preservation, identify biomarkers and further understand the foodways and consumption behavior of the “Wall People”. Additionally, she will collaborate with archaeologists from China and analyze potteries from contemporaneous Liao-Jin sites. These day-to-day aspects will enable a better understanding of daily life at the Wall: What did the "Wall people" eat and use? What was daily life like associated with the MWS?  Can the food habits identified reflect certain ethnic groups? Are there differences between the food consumed by people that worked and lived near the wall and those living in contemporaneous cities? All of these will assist in tackling main issues of the Wall project such as who built the Medieval Wall System, the function of the system, how it was maintained, operated and its final abandonment etc.