Abstract
The early Milky Way’s formation was characterized by the accretion of smaller galactic systems that led over billions of years to the rich and complex Galaxy we observe today. The fields of stellar and galactic archaeology offer a way to use ancient, still surviving stars from across the Milky Way to reconstruct various aspects of the early physical and chemical evolution of our home galaxy. But there remain many unanswered question regarding the nature of the first stars and nucleosynthesis events, about the role of the first galaxies and galactic building blocks, and to what extent we can identify and reconstruct these past merger and accretion events. In my talk, I will give an overview about several recent stellar and galactic archaeology results and how we have used them towards understanding the complex history of how the Milky Way came together. These cover a low-metallicity map of the Milky Way, the discovery of Atari, a metal-poor disk component, the ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Tucana II that is likely the product of a merger of two first galaxies, the r-process rich ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Reticulum II that was enriched by a neutron star merger, and the most complete r-process abundance pattern obtained of any star besides the Sun.