Deadline: November 1, annually; announced February 1

Amount: Varies; typical awards range from $4,000 to $10,000

Purpose: To support projects pertaining to the archaeology of Portugal. These include, but are not limited to, research projects, colloquia, symposia, publication, and travel for research or to academic meetings for the purpose of presenting papers on the archaeology of Portugal.

Requirements: Portuguese, American, and other international scholars are invited to apply. At the conclusion of the project, recipients must submit a report to the Chair of the AIA Fellowships Committee. Recipients are also expected to submit an abstract to the Program Committee within two years in order to be considered for participation in the AIA Annual Meeting.

Current Recipient

Anna J. Waterman, a doctoral student with the University of Iowa, is this year’s recipient of the Archaeology of Portugal Fellowship. Her project, and dissertation topic, is “Marked in Life and Death: Identifying Biological Markers of Social Differentiation in Late Prehistoric Portugal”, and her work is on Late Neolithic and Copper Age (3500-2000 BC) burials near the Zambujal settlement site in the Portuguese Estremadura. Ms. Waterman will use the award of $7,812 to look for differences in health, status, pathology rates, age-at-death ratios, diet, and mobility patterns to assess social differentiation in the communities, augmenting work that has been done on grave goods and burial practices for the area. Her research will also further understanding of health, diet and mobility for the region and time period. Ms. Waterman’s fellowship activities will include travel to Portugal for data collection, preparation of samples and delivery to Florida laboratories, and analysis of results.

2009 Recipient

Ana Maria Silva holds degrees in biology and biological anthropology from Portugal’s University of Coimbra, where she is currently assistant professor of anthropology and with the Research Centre for Anthropology and Health. Silva’s project is “Tales from the Dead: Funerary Practices in the Late Neolithic Hypogeum of Monte Canelas I (Alcalar, Algarve, Portugal).” The study focuses on of one of the sites found in Portugal and across southwest Europe that indicate complex funerary behavior. The Monte Canelas I site, a Late Neolithic artificial cave, has revealed more than 7,700 bone fragments belonging to at least 171 individuals. It is one of the few sites where the new discipline of “archeothanatology” can be applied in which each bone’s position and geoarchaeological and taphonomical information is recorded. The $10,000 fellowship award will support scanning, GIS analysis, and radiocarbon dating, with the aim of precisely dating the relative chronology of depositions at the site, and wider goal of better understanding the complex relationship between the living and the dead in this and similar prehistoric societies.

2008 Recipient

Ana Maria Gonçalves Ávila de Melo is the 2008 recipient of the Archaeology of Portugal Fellowship. Her project is the “Prehistoric Metallurgy in the Castro de Pragança, Estremadura, Western Portugal”. The collection of metal artifacts and debris from the site of Castro de Pragança is the largest from any single Portuguese prehistoric settlement, and is housed in the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia in Lisbon. Less than 10% of the material has been studied, and the main purpose of Ms. de Melo’s project is to expand the preliminary research recently conducted, and to understand the technological and social conditions that accompanied the bronze artifact production and circulation during the Chalcolithic through the Iron Age. Ms. de Melo hopes to shed light on social organization of the people involved in the production and consumption of these materials.

2007 Recipients

Excavations at Vale Boi have yielded Solutrean points that are dated at 20,000 B.P.

Nuno Bicho, Universidade do Algarve
A Tale of Two Seas: Upper Paleolithic Ecology in Vale Boi, Southwestern Algarve, Portugal
Bicho’s research focuses on Iberian Upper Paleolithic ecology, which is known mainly from a few relatively confined areas. Little research has been done to link the cultural dynamics on the Iberian Peninsula as a whole, but the discovery of the rock-shelter of Vale Boi, which is currently the earliest occupation of modern humans in southwestern Iberia, will allow for the investigation of the transition from the Middle to Upper Paleolithic periods through human ecology, subsistence strategies, land use, social interaction, symbolic behavior, and technological traits in the area that seems to have been the last refuge of the Neanderthal populations.

Tina Manne, University of Arizona
Community Organization and Human Foraging Decisions through the Upper Paleolithic to Epi-Paleolithic in Southern Portugal
Tina Manne’s research aims to reveal changes in human foraging behavior and site function during the Upper and Epi-Paleolithic periods. The coastal archaeological site of Vale Boi has the potential to provide detailed information on questions of changing human foraging decisions. Prior research in the central and eastern sections of the Mediterranean Rim suggest that increasing population pressure was the catalyst for increasing diet breadth and subsequent technological radiation. Systematic research of this issue has not previously been made in the western area of the Mediterranean rim. Tina will also explore the probable effect of the relative geographic isolation of the southernmost tip of Iberia on the evolution of human foraging behavior and subsistence technology.

Maia M. Langley, Universidade de Lisboa
Terra Sigillata From the Villa of Torre de Palma: Consumption and Trade in Roman Lusitania, Portugal
Maia Langley is researching the Torre de Palma Roman Villa--the largest known rural villa in Iberia--through the analysis of the terra sigillata found on site. The temporal and geographical distribution of this distinctive and widespread ceramic ware holds the key to understanding local and long-distance trade and consumption patterns. Maia has now catalogued nearly 15,800 sherds of this pottery, which has never been comprehensively studied, and discovered the existence of two fabrics in this collection whose proveniences have yet to be classified by other scholars. She hopes to identify the production centers of these unknown fabrics and add to the spectrum of fabrics that were produced mainly in areas of Hispania and North Africa.

Ana Sofia Correia Jorge, University of Sheffield
Pottery Technology and Society in Early Bronze Age Central Portugal: An Integrated Approach
Ana Jorge’s research seeks to understand cultural change in prehistoric Iberian Peninsula. Through an integrated approach to ceramic technology that combines stylistic and analytical data, she hopes to illuminate issues of identity, trade, and technological change. Integrated analytical programs have not yet been implemented on such material, so the project has major implications also for the development of methodologies of ceramic study in Portugal.