Staff

Broadly trained archaeologist, but specialised on Middle Pleistocene industries. Combining technological analysis with cutting-edge 3D imaging technology and Geometric Morphometrics, my main research interests are focused on the study of the Acheulean industries, analysing from shaping strategies to shapes variability, to understand the human occupation Western Europe.

Originally from Valladolid, my education includes a Bachelors’ degree in History (2002) and a Master of Quaternary (2003) at the Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona. I got a pre-doctoral grant funded by the Fundación Siglo para las Artes de Castilla y León, defending my PhD at the Burgos University in 2011. It was focused on the characterization of the Middle Pleistocene Technological systems on the Western Europe comparing Atapuerca (Galería and Gran Dolina-TD10.1) with Boxgrove (Quarry 1B). During this time, I got two Mobility Scholarships led me to make short research stays in two British Institutions: University College of London and British Museum.

The Archaeological sites of Atapuerca have been crucial on my career, being an active member of its research team since 1999. I have been directly involved in the management of excavations at Galería and Covacha de los Zarpazos sites from 2002 until now. These fieldwork responsibilities helped me during my professional activities as a completion of commercial archaeology partially out of Academia, and completing my knowledge of the Cultural Heritage on Prehistory research cycle.

After a period of maternity leave in 2015, I turned back to the Academia. Thanks to my previous established international network focused on the European Acheulean, in 2017 I got a Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellowship (IF Project ID: 748316), supervised by Dr. Nick Ashton at the British Museum (London, UK). This project led me to develop a new methodology combining the most traditional analysis with the use of 3D models, geometric morphometrics and other statistics and computational approaches, which improve my skills on these fields. The application of this method on 10 sites along UK, France and Spain, led me to gain a regional perspective of the Middle Pleistocene technology. During this time I was intensively working on an international network including British Museum, but also University College of London, Natural History Museum, Bradford University (UK), CNRS–UMR 7194 (MNHN, FR), Senckenberg Institute (GER), CENIEH and IPHES (ESP), crucial on my carreer.

In 2019, I obtained a one-year post-doctoral contract at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle UMR 7194 Paris (France) in the frame of the NEANDROOTS project (ANR-19-CE27-0011), funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR). I was working on the creation of a detailed database on MIS11 sites from Western and Central Europe.

Currently I hold a Beatriu de Pinós – MSCA COFUND Fellowship at IPHES (Tarragona, Spain) (2019 BP 00094). My previous post-doctoral experience led me to enlarge the technological sample, including more sites from the Mediterranean area (Italy, Iberian Peninsula and North Africa) and improve my skills on the use of new computational tools to reproduce two fix images of Western Europe at two different times: A) 1Ma-700Ka, when we know a low colonization degree of Europe, but with a dual presence of Mode 1 and 2 technologies; B) 450 to 250Ka (after the glaciation of MIS 12), when Western Europe was massively occupied only by Acheulean groups.

Alternative email address: pgarciamedrano@gmail.com
https://www.weap.es/
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4574-1019
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paula-Garcia-Medrano