CRETUS STAFF

Olalla López Costas

Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow
Department: History (Arqueology Area)
Centre: CRETUS (USC)
Research Group: EcoPast
Phone: +34 8818 16007 /13315
Email: olalla.lopez@usc.es
Group Web: EcoPast

Olalla López-Costas is a Ramón y Cajal research fellow and professor in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC). Since 2015, she has been a researcher and professor at the Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies at Stockholm University (Sweden).
She holds a degree in Biology and a PhD in Physical and Forensic Anthropology from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Granada, where she remains affiliated with her research group. She has been working on archaeological excavations in Spain, Greece, and Portugal for over two decades.
Her main area of ​​research is the reconstruction of lifestyles, as well as the relationship between humans and the environment, through the study of human remains and necropolises. Although she has worked at sites from all periods, her main focus is on the Roman and Medieval periods of the Iberian Peninsula and Scandinavia. She has trained in physical anthropology, paleopathology, and geochemical studies, including stable and unstable isotopes. She has also worked on paleoenvironmental reconstruction through the analysis of peatlands and lake sediments, and on geoarchaeology. She is passionate about the study of historical texts and sources and their value for archaeology.
Olalla is the principal investigator of the ERC Consolidator Grant PollutedPast project “Environmental metal pollution revealed in archaeological human remains” (no. 10108783). She firmly defends the breakdown of barriers between disciplines.

Research Lines

• Reconstruction of diet, mobility, and metal contamination through archaeological human and animal remains.
• Archaeometric study of necropolises and burial sites.
• Normal and pathological variability in human history, primarily infectious and metabolic diseases.
• Childhood in the Roman and medieval periods from a multidisciplinary perspective.
• Importance of the paleoenvironment and environmental changes in historical processes.