Rodrigo Pacheco Ruiz, MA Maritime Archaeology

•  Oct 2010 
  CONACYT Doctoral grant View website

I studied Anthropology and specialised in Archaeology at Mexico's National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH). Directed by Dr. Felipe Bate I worked on adapting a theoretical and methodological model focused in understanding how de-contextualised archaeological information, could be reincorporated in the archaeological research process. This took me a long time, because I moved from busy Mexico City, eight hundred kilometers north, to the extreme Coahuila desert, where I spend around a year analysing private archaeological collections and reassigning these to sites in the area. It was hard work but it produced lots of interesting results. Among those, the opportunity to create a new comprehensive lithic typology for northern Mexico, but most important the potential that the area has to offer in terms of new archaeological research.

Although the prospect of working in such a wonderful place was very attractive, my passion and interest towards more 'watery' issues was much more strong. I started my diving career a few years before, always with the chance to match this with my dedication to archaeology, and in 2009 I was able to travel to the UK to learn how to fit them together.

I arrived at Southampton at the end of 2008 to start straightaway my postgraduate studies. 2009 was what it could be, potentially, the busiest year of my life, with lots of things to do in very short time. Throughout the course of the programme I learned, in-depth, the richness of maritime cultures around the world and the most relevant theoretical points of view regarding the discipline. Afterwards, and towards the start of my research, I found that some of the most important problems addressed, in general for the Iron Age, in Europe were much more accentuated if viewed from a maritime perspective. There was a huge absence of information and I focused on a fascinating and complex area, in terms of its 'maritimity', and of course its archaeology: the Northwestern Iberian Peninsula. I recognised that there are much more questions that existing answers regarding the topic. But I guess that one of the biggest obstacles towards knowledge, and in urge to overcome, is the vicious circle created by the lack of published English literature regarding this topic, and at the same time the obscure nature of their Spanish counterpart.

With the support of CONACyT, and in behalf of the University of Southampton my actual research aim is to understand how maritime connection and landscape change relates with the maritime social identities of 'isolated' Iron Age communities. Read more in my PHD page in this blog