Marta Diaz-Guardamino

I am Associate Professor in Archaeology and the Digital Visualization Lab Manager. Before joining Durham in 2018, I was Lecturer in Archaeology at Cardiff University, where I convened and taught modules on the European and British Neolithic, archaeological theory and Geographical Information Systems. Here at Durham, I teach mainly on British, Iberian, European and World prehistory (Neolithic to Bronze Age), and digital visualization techniques.

My research specialism focuses on late prehistoric connectivity, social relations, monuments and art in Atlantic Europe (5th-1st millennia BC). I am interested in the application of new (and not so new) theoretical approaches, digital visualization techniques and spatial methods to the study of these themes. Field archaeology is one of my passions, and I have experience in leading international multidisciplinary research teams.

Some of my current research is centred on long distance interactions between Iberia and the Atlantic North during the Late Bronze Age, with a focus on the circulation of metals and the mining communities involved in that exchange (Maritime Encounters Project). Related to this is the new comparative analysis and interpretation of Bronze Age rock art traditions from Scandinavia and Iberia, which we are conducting through new high-resolution 3D and 2.5D digital and analogue documentation (RAW Project). Added to exploring the connections of Iberian communities with the Atlantic North through the flows of metals, people and ideas, we are conducting fieldwork at a major Bronze Age funerary complex situated in an important mining area in southern Spain, to get a better understanding of the people and the communities involved in those long-distance interactions (fieldwork at Cañaveral de León, Huelva). A constant theme in my research are standing stones and sculptures, which were used to commemorate the ancestors in prehistoric societies. I have conducted fieldwork at several findspots where we could shed new light on the complex lives of these monuments and the communities attached to them (in Cañaveral de León, Huelva, Mirasiviene in Seville or Almargen in Malaga province).

I completed my PhD on Iberian prehistoric sculpture and its European context at the University Complutense of Madrid in 2010, and received the Extraordinary Doctoral Award 2009/2010 of the Faculty of Humanities of that university. During my PhD I spent a year at the Anthropology Department of the University of California, Berkeley (USA) with an Education Abroad Program (EAP) scholarship. I also secured a DAAD scholarship to conduct research for some months at the Johann-Wolfgang Goethe University and the Roman-Germanic Commission (RGK) in Frankfurt-am-Main (Germany). In 2011 I joined the Archaeological Computing Research Group at the University of Southampton as a postdoctoral researcher funded by the Spanish Government to conduct a two-year individual research project. After a year teaching as a lecturer in that department, I joined as a Research Associate the ‘Making a Mark: Imagery and process in the British and Irish Neolithic’ project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust (2014-16).