Dr Borja Legarra Herrero

Research summary

Current Projects

• Minoan gold: an archaeometallurgical analysis of Crete's place in the east Mediterranean world (Co-directed with Prof. Marcos Martinón-Torres, Crete, Greece)

• The research aims to study Pre- and Protopalatial gold items in order to test the hypothesis that gold supply to Crete, and technological choices in gold metallurgy, changed at some point in the 2nd millennium BC. Our results will provide new insight into the developing relationship of Crete with the Aegean and east Mediterranean world before and after the appearance of the first palaces. The methodology includes a range of macroscopic and microscopic analyses of manufacture and wear traits, as well as the first chemical analyses of most of the items using non-invasive portable X-ray flourescence (pXRF)

Verasur. Human Mobility and long-term social change in the west Mediterranean: The case of the Vera Region (Almeria, Spain) (Co-director with Dr. Mercedes Murillo-Barroso. Almeria, Spain)

• The project aims to understand better how reiterated processes of human mobility affect the long socio-political history of a Mediterranean region, focusing in the key case of Vera, SE Spain. This region has repeatedly experienced the arrival of new human groups and cultural influences, from Neolithic farmers to Arab culture. At the same time the region has a remarkably dynamic history of social change that saw indications of complexity already in the Bronze Age and early iterations of Phoenician, Visigoth and Arab state organisation. The project fuses legacy data with a new intensive archaeological survey to investigate the diachronic study of the settlement patterns, demographic history and resource exploitation strategies in the region. We will be able to produce a high-resolution deep history of the varying relationship between mobility and social development in this Mediterranean area.

Research Interests

Aegean Prehistory

The later prehistory of South East Spain

Ceramic studies

State formation

Archaeology and anthropology of death

Landscape archaeology and survey methods

Teaching summary

• Course Co-ordinator: ARCL0005 Introduction to Greek Archaeology
• Course Co-ordinator: ARCL0066 The Emergence of Bronze Age Aegean Civilisation (2021-22)
• Course Co-ordinator: ARCL0068 The Late Bronze Age Aegean in the Mediterranean World  (2022-23)
• Course Co-ordinator: ARCL0141 Mediterranean Prehistory

Education

University College London

Doctorate, Doctor of Philosophy | 2006

University College London

Other higher degree, Master of Arts | 2002

Universidad de Deusto

First Degree, Bachelor of Arts | 2000

Universidad de Deusto

First Degree, Bachelor of Arts | 1998

Publications

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