A.C. Colonese

I am Director of Research in the Department of Prehistory and the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). I am particularly interested in the emergence of food production and the role of coastal ecosystem services to early societies in South America and southern Europe. My research combines zooarchaeology, light stable isotopes (organic and inorganic) and organic residue analysis to derive ecological and economic information on past societies in these regions. More recently, I have been exploring the potential contributions of archaeology and history to biological conservation in biodiversity hotspots in tropical and subtropical South America (Historical Ecology). I have led multidisciplinary projects on pre-Columbian coastal fisheries in the Amazon and the Atlantic Forest coast of Brazil (EU-Marie Curie, FAPESP, Newton-British Academy, National Geographic). I am the PI of the ERC-Consolidator project TRADITION, which is reconstructing 5000 years of coastal socio-ecological systems in the southwestern Atlantic Ocean. I am a co-PI of ChemArch at UAB, which is an International Doctoral Training Network funded by the Marie Sklowdoska-Curie Action (ITN, EDJ) on the bimolecular archaeology of prehistoric artefacts in Europe; and also co-PI of ANIMAL FARM - Unravelling the importance of animal management to food security with the introduction of farming in the Iberian peninsula: a bioarchaeological approach, funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2020-115715GB-I00). I am the co-leader of the Societal Challenge OCEANS (Ziveri & Colonese) of the Maria de Maeztu (2020-2023) Unit of Excellence, accredited to ICTA by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO). My research team includes PhDs, postdocs and technicians funded by distinct competitive grants (ERC-CoG, Marie Sklowdoska-Curie, Maria de Zambrano, Beatriu de Pinos).