Dr Maite I Garcia-Collado
Postdoctoral Research Associate (Stable Isotopes)

Profile

Biography

Maite is a medieval archaeologist interested in biomolecular archaeology and human osteoarchaeology in order to understand historical societies. She has participated in archaeological projects in the Basque Country, northern Spain, Tuscany and southern France. She also has significant experience teaching archaeology and she has been employed in commercial archaeology as a human osteoarchaeology specialist. She has authored more than 20 papers in scientific journals and monographs and she has contributed to conferences and seminars in over ten countries. Besides, Maite participates regularly in public outreach initiatives aimed at communicating archaeological science in schools, local communities and the media.

Career

2025-Present Postdoctoral research associate, University of York

As a member of the MEDGREENREV ERC funded project, Maite joined BioArCh at the University of York to work on stable isotope analysis as well as compound specific isotope analysis of human, animal and plant samples from Iberia, the Balearic islands and northern Africa. She will use these new data to address the evolution of agrarian practices and human diet along changing religious identities and political rules during the Middle Ages.

2024-2025 Lecturer at the Department of Archaeology, University of the Basque Country

Maite taught the modules Topics in prehistoric and historical archaeology and Advanced topics in historical archaeology in Basque and Spanish for six months as part of the bachelor degree in History, receiving high scores in student satisfaction surveys. Besides, she supervised a master dissertation at the University of Granada. She also took part in four evaluation panels for BA dissertations and acted as an external reviewer for a PhD thesis from the University of Campania.

2021-2024 Postdoctoral researcher, University of the Basque Country & University of York

The Government of the Basque Country funded Maite’s postdoctoral project Between the countryside and the city: diet and social practices of rural communities and urban populations in Early Medieval Iberia. As part of this research Maite worked for two years at the centre BioArCh of the University of York under the supervision of prof. M. Alexander. Later she joint the Research Group in Medieval Archaeology, Heritage and Cultural Landscapes led by prof. J.A. Quirós at the University of the Basque Country.

2020-2021 Lecturer at the Department of Archaeology, University of the Basque Country

For six months Maite covered teaching in the bachelor degree in History. She taught the modules Introduction to archaeology, Archaeology and Topics in prehistoric and historical archaeology in Spanish and Basque with excellent results in student satisfaction surveys.

2018-2019 Human osteoarchaeology specialist, Qark Arqueología Ltd.

In this role Maite was in charge of the osteoarchaeological and palaeopathological analysis human skeletal assemblages excavated by Qark Arqueología Ltd. She was involved in the study of Roman, medieval and postmedieval populations from the Basque Country and northern Spain, including cleaning, inventory, age and sex estimation, assessment of pathologies, photographic recording and production of reports.

2012-2020 PhD Medieval archaeology, University of the Basque Country

Maite got her PhD in 2020 with the thesis titled Social archaeology of food in early medieval rural Iberia (5th-9th c. AD), which was awarded an Extraordinary Doctorate Prize by the University of the Basque Country. In this research she explored agrarian production strategies and food consumption patterns in three Iberian regions through carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analyses of humans and fauna. Maite’s PhD was supervised by prof. J.A. Quirós and it was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education. She also benefited from two secondments at the University of Campania (Italy) where she worked at the in-house stable isotope analysis facilities.

2011-2012 MSc Palaeopathology, University of Durham

In her second master degree Maite was trained as a human osteoarchaeologist with strong foundations in palaeopathology. She was also introduced to biomolecular methods. Her dissertation, supervised by prof. A. Millard and Dr T. Jakob, was titled Diet as a social marker: Stable isotopes and palaeopathological analysis of an Early Medieval rural community in Spain. Gózquez de Arriba (San Martín de la Vega, Madrid, Spain), 6^th to 8^th c. and it was the first early medieval case study from Iberia where stable isotope analyses were applied.

2010-2011 MA Medieval history and archaeology, University of the Basque Country

During her first master degree Maite received specialised training in sources and methods to study Medieval societies and worked first-hand on the elaboration of stratigraphic, topographic and chronological data from recent archaeological excavations. Her dissertation Early medieval funerary spaces: Álava, 8^th-11^th c., supervised by prof. J.A. Quirós, proposed a classification of cemeteries in a context of great diversity of funerary practices and was awarded the prize for the best student in her cohort.

2006-2010 BA History, University of the Basque Country

Maite’s bachelor degree focused on Roman and Medieval history and historical archaeology. She participated in multiple archaeological projects in the Basque Country and Italy, both in fieldwork and post-excavation processing. She also spent a year abroad at the University of Siena (Italy) as part of the Erasmus exchange programme.

Research

Overview

Maite specialises on the application of stable isotope analyses to understand agrarian practices, human diets and mobility of humans and animals in historical societies, with an emphasis on the social interpretation of results in terms of social status and personal and collective identities such age, sex, health or religion. She is an experienced archaeological scientist working with carbon, nitrogen and sulphur isotopic ratios of bulk bone collagen, incremental dentine sections and charred seeds to reconstruct diet, agriculture and animal husbandry, and oxygen and strontium isotope ratios of human and fauna dental enamel to analyse mobility and migrations. In her new role in the MEDGREENREV project she will also use compound specific isotope analyses combined with Bayesian modelling to get more refined dietary reconstructions that will solve the equifinality problem of C₄ plant and marine resource consumers.

Projects

MEDGREENREV is an ERC-funded project led jointly by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (prof. H. Kirchner), the University of Granada (Dr G. García-Contreras), the University of Reading (prof. A. Pluskowski) and the University of York (prof. M. Alexander). Under the title Re-thinking the “Green Revolution” in the Medieval Western Mediterranean (6^th-16^th centuries), this research focuses on the impact of political, religious and social changes on environmental conditions, agrarian practices and settlement patterns from a wide chronological and geographic point of view including Iberia, the Balearic islands and northern Africa. The project brings together a large number of archaeologists and scientists with different expertise that allow to integrate diverse proxies such as archaeobotanical materials, human and animal osteoarchaeological remains and soil samples for a long-term overview.

Grants

• Postdoctoral research project Between the countryside and the city: diet and social practices of rural communities and urban populations in Early Medieval Iberia, funded by the Government of the Basque Country.
• Research project A comparative approach to diet during childhood based on sequential dentine sample analysis of carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios of deviant burials in early medieval cemeteries, funded by the Palarq Foundation.

External activities

Memberships

• European Association of Archaeologists (EAA)
• IsoArch Association
• Aranzadi Science Society

Media coverage

Fortnightly section about archaeology and archaeological science on the radio programme Amarauna on Euskadi Irratia.