Jerardino Wiesenborn, Antonieta
Fellow Researcher at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF).
Humanities
15 Mar, 2010 - 30 Sep, 2015
Resigned
Short biography
I trained as a Biologist and specialized in Marine Sciences (U. of Chile, 1986), and later undertook PhD studies in Archaeology (U. of Cape Town, 1996). My initial participation in a large multidisciplinary project focussing on human impacts on marine shellfish communities made me shift my interest to more anthropological matters. Reflecting on the time depth of this complex ecological relationship led me to pursue archaeological research. More distant and related archaeological themes have permeated my research interests further. After a 2-year postdoc at UCT, I worked as a freelance archaeologist and later as a Heritage manager before joining ICREA in 2010.
Research interests
My main interest is in Stone Age hunter-gatherers (h-g) in coastal settings, their foraging ecology and changing adaptations through time. I am particularly interested in identifying the factors behind the diverse trajectories taken by h-g groups. Central to my work are the following topics: the role of coastal resources in human evolution, h-g resource intensification, sedentarization in the absence of domestication and transitions to food producing societies. I have also been exploring the social and ecological processes behind distinct regional developments and differences in adaptative strategies among contemporary groups. I use foraging ecology, theory of complex systems and cultural contact and palaeoenvironmetal reconstructions to explain the archaeological record. I'm involved with projects in South Africa, Chile and Argentina.