Every footprint, hearth, and fragment of waste tells a story — even if it’s thousands of years old. I study the microscopic and molecular clues buried in soils to uncover how people lived, moved, and interacted with their environments.

I am Dr Natalia Égüez, a geo-ethnoarchaeologist currently working at the Institute of Natural Products and Agrobiology (IPNA) (Tenerife, Spain), which is part of the network of research centres of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), a State Agency of the Ministry of Science and Innovation.

Within the Social Sciences, Heritage, and Food Research Group (Department of Life and Earth Sciences), I lead the BIOMARQ Laboratory, which focuses on the adaptation and animal exploitation strategies in past societies through ethnoarchaeology and biomolecular archaeology.

I am also affiliated with the Archaeological Micromorphology and Biomarkers Lab (AMBI LAB, IUBO-AG), University of La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain) and the Department of Anthropology, University of California Davis (United States).

In 2018, I completed my PhD in Natural Sciences at the University of Kiel (Germany) and directed a project funded by the Early Career National Geographic Society grant: Investigating Pastoral Ethnoarchaeology in Western Mongolia: biomolecular signatures of habitation sites. This research has continued with several projects as PI, such as the Archaeology of nomadic pastoralism in Mongolia: the invisible traces of domestic spaces with the support of Fundación Palarq (2020-2022).

Research Interests & Expertise
Overall, my research focuses on understanding the socio-economic dynamics of human groups and their relationships with animals, paying close attention to how people adapt to natural environments and shape them into cultural landscapes.

Through geo-ethnoarchaeology, I connect human behaviors observed in present-day communities with the traces those activities leave in the archaeological record. By combining soil micromorphology, lipid analysis, proteomics, and stable isotope biochemistry, I recover microscopic and molecular signatures from both ancient and modern domestic spaces.

This microcontextual biomarker approach allows us to reconstruct details of the palaeoenvironment, trophic cascades, seasonality, diet, and even an individual’s biological sex. My particular fascination lies in the taphonomy of excrements and other organic remains from hunter-gatherer and nomadic pastoralist sites — small traces that open big windows into the past.

Do not hesitate to contact me at natalia.eguez@ipna.csic.es or neguezgo@ull.edu.es