Vera Aldeias

Researcher, ICArEHB

Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behaviour (ICArEHB)
FCHS, University of Algarve
Campus de Gambelas
8005-139 Faro
Portugal

(+351) 289 800 988
vlaldeias@ualg.pt

ORCID: 0000-0002-7680-182X

Research Interests

My main interests concern the interaction between past humans and their environment. I focus on two main lines of research: (1) reconstructing the context and site formation processes underlying the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition and emergence of Anatomically Modern Humans; and (2) deciphering behavioral events from anthropogenic sediments, such as Paleolithic fire use, Neandertal funerary behavior, and the construction of shell mounds.I am particularly interested in assessing the “invisible record” embedded in archaeological sediments, and to achieve this I use micromorphological investigations of archaeological deposits. Since 2022, I am the PI of the ERC Starting Grant MATRIX that aims to investigate interactions between Neandertals and Anatomically Modern Humans by looking at the sedimentary record, extracting the wealth of information stored beyond the macroscopically visible record

Short Bio

I have an interdisciplinary academic record with a graduation in Archaeology at the University of Lisbon in 2002, followed by a specialization in Geoarchaeology by the Department of Geology, University of Lisbon. In 2012, I earned a PhD from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences in the University of Pennsylvania. My postdoctoral research started at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and I am currently the head of the Geoarchaeology working group. Both as a field archaeologist and geologist, I have directed excavation projects and work in archaeological contexts in France, Portugal, Bulgaria, Israel, Morocco, Ethiopia, Mozambique and South Africa.