Belarte Franco, Maria Carme
ICREA Research Professor at Institut Català d'Arqueologia Clàssica (ICAC).
Humanities
Short biography
PhD in Geography and History (1995), University of Barcelona, for my research on proto-historic societies in Catalonia through the analysis of domestic architecture. From 1996 to 1998 I was a post-doctoral researcher at the CNRS (Unité Mixte de Recherche 5140 - Lattes, France). From 1999 to 2003, I worked at the University of Barcelona as a post-doctoral researcher, with research periods in France. In 2004, I took a position at the ICAC to start a research programme about the complex societies of Western Mediterranean. I joined ICREA in 2006 as an ICREA researcher, and became an ICREA research professor in 2010. I develop my research at the ICAC in collaboration with researchers of Catalan, French and Tunisian Institutions. I made stays as invited researcher at the Universities of Chicago and Montpellier. In 2013, I received Positive Assessment from the AQU Catalunya (Catalan Evaluation Agency) in order to apply for a university full professor position.
Research interests
The general goal of my research is to study the processes that transformed the Late Bronze Age local-scale groups into the complex societies based on large territorial organizations of the Central and Western Mediterranean Iron Age. My topics of research include urbanization and state formation, settlement patterns, architecture, funerary practices and rituals. My current research mainly focuses on the study of protohistoric societies through an interdisciplinary analysis of domestic architecture and activities. I have recently begun the research project "Transdisciplinary and experimental study of combustion structures in the western Mediterranean during protohistory" (TRANSCOMB), that applies an interdisciplinary methodology to the study of domestic hearths and ovens of protohistoric societies. It integrates different specialities, including experimental archaeology.