Gonzalo Linares Matas

Thesis TItle

Late Holocene Settlement Dynamics and trans-Saharan connections in southeastern Mauritania

Research Interests

Gonzalo holds a BA in Archaeology & Anthropology and an MSt in Archaeology from St. Hugh’s College, University of Oxford.

Before the pandemic, he was aiming to explore the interactions between early humans and social carnivores in Pleistocene Eurasia through bone taphonomy. However, in the context of fieldwork restrictions, he was eager to embrace the affordances of remote sensing to understand the prehistory of southeastern Mauritania, exploring how aspects of subsistence, social inequality, climate change, and cultural interactions shaped settlement patterns and funerary practices in the region.

He is also interested in the ethical contexts of global heritage management and the histories of archaeology and anthropology as practical modes of enquiry.