University of Southampton

Post-Doc, Archaeology

Visiting Scholar / Postdoctoral Grantee of the Spanish Ministry of Education

Thesis Title: Prehistoric stelae and statue-menhirs in the Iberian Peninsula

About

I am a Postdoctoral Visiting Researcher in the Archaeological Computing Research Group sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Education. I obtained my BA (Licenciatura), MA (Grado) and PhD (Extraordinary Doctoral Award, 2009/2010) in Prehistoric Archaeology from the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain), and specialise in the archaeology of the Neolithic, Copper and Bronze Age periods in the Iberian Peninsula, especially in relation to the study of rock art, sculpture, mortuary practices, monumentality and landscape. During my PhD I carried out research stays at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität (Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany) and at the University of California, Berkeley (United States). I have been involved in varied field projects in Spain and Portugal and have served as a contract archaeologist for public institutions in Portugal, including the IPPAR (Portuguese Institute of Architectural and Archaeological Heritage).

My research is particularly concerned with the role of the material mediating social relationships. Currently, I am conducting a two-year (2011-2013) research project supervised by Dr. David Wheatley, which is aimed at exploring the role of visual representations of people and/or things in monumental free-standing stones (‘stelae and statue-menhirs’) and the ‘places’ where they were located in the crafting of collective identities and territories during the Bronze Age (ca. 2200-900/850 AC) in the Iberian Peninsula applying computer techniques, i.e. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI). As part of this research I am coordinating, jointly with Dr. David Wheatley (University of Southampton, UK) and Dr. Leonardo García Sanjuán (University of Sevilla, Spain), collaborative fieldwork in the Guadalquivir Valley (Spain) with an interdisciplinary team involving researchers of the University of Seville, the University of Southampton and the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council).

My PhD research, funded by the Caja Madrid Foundation, the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and the EAP (Education Abroad Program, Universities of California and Complutense de Madrid), attempted to provide a broad interpretative overview of prehistoric stelae and statue-menhirs on the Iberian Peninsula (ca. 5500-750 BC), focusing on their archaeological contextualization and the analysis of the ‘places’ where they were found at scales of higher resolution, tackling on issues such as personhood, commemoration and social reproduction.

My research interests include the intersection of Semiotics, Phenomenology and Pragmatism, and its potential to forge novel understandings among archaeologists on the social production of knowledge in the past and the present, and the role of the material in these processes.

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