Staff

I was born and raised in Madrid, I studied at the UCM and in 1987 I joined the Research and Excavation Project of the Sierra de Atapuerca sites with Eudald Carbonell. In 1995 I received my doctorate from the UCM and between 1996 and 1997 I enjoyed a postdoctoral fellowship at the MacDonald Institute for Archaeological Research in Cambridge (UK), under the supervision of Prof. Paul Mellars.

In 1997 I began to work as a teacher and researcher in a degree at the URV - in the recently created Institut d'estudis del Món Antic (TGN) -, in what could be called the first germ of the master's degree in Human Evolution taught by the members of the URV and IPHES at this university, which continues to this day, and in which I continue teaching two topics: Quaternary Excavation Methods and Archeology of the Mind.

In 2005 I obtained my first competitive research project at the URV (2005ACCÉS-13), which was followed by two others (URV-2009-AIRE-05 and 2009PCF-03) from the same university. In them, and in collaboration with the Mona Foundation (Girona, etc.), we began to investigate certain aspects of human cognitive evolution, such as manual laterality, with chimpanzees and current humans. As a result of the success in publications, conferences and dissemination of the results of this project, later, in 2008 and 2012, I obtained two projects from MICINN (HAR2009-07223) and MINECO (HAR2012-32548), on the origin of technological behavior in human evolution and social learning, as a necessary gear in the dissemination and maintenance of technologies during Prehistory.

In 2018 I became Co-PI with Prof. Eudald Carbonell of the Sierra de Atapuerca research subproject (MICIU-PGC2018-093925-B-C32) at IPHES-CERCA. This is a subproject of enormous magnitude, in coordination with those directed by Profs. José María Bermúdez de Castro (CENIEH) and Juan Luís Arsuaga (ISCIII). In 2022, I became the first Principal Investigator (MICINN-PID2021-122355NB-C32).

The lines of research that I have developed the most are linked to the first occupations of the European subcontinent, technology and behavior, and the evolution of cognition and the origin of technological behavior through ethoprimatology.

I am author or co-author of more than 70 scientific articles, 55 of them of international impact (including Nature, Science, PNAS, and Journal of Human Evolution), and author and co-author of 5 popular books and university handbooks. My h-index is 28 (Clarivate) and 29 (Scopus). Citations (excluding self-citations): 2,426.