Report of Cristina Martínez-Álvarez from an internship abroad as part of the “NextGenPhDs” project

Cristina Martínez-Álvarez is the recipient of an internship abroad competition within the NextGenPhDs project, funded by the National Agency for Academic Exchange. She is preparing her PhD thesis at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, entitled “Islamization in kūra of Ilbīra (Al-Andalus). Comparative study on pottery production and distribution in the Early Islamic period in south-east Iberian Peninsula”.

The PhD candidate recently completed a two-month internship at the INCIPIT (Instituto de ciencias del patrimonio CSIC) in Santiago de Compostela.

“During my first month of internship, I spent most of the time in the research centre’s library to carry out theoretical and practical training in petrographic analysis. I also had meetings with specialists and technicians to solve doubts, and I spent practical laboratory hours with using the petrographic optical microscope to learn the basic concepts necessary for analysing thin sections through petrography/optical microscopy (OM).

In my second month of my stay, with the help of a specialist in the geology and ceramics of the archaeological sites relevant to my project, I was able to classify the thin sections of all the ceramic samples included in the research project. Seventy samples from six archaeological sites in the territory of the kūra of Ilbīra were analysed. The samples were grouped into ceramic fabrics that will allow us to determine the provenance and possible production centres of the studied ceramics in the coming months.

I also had the opportunity to attend several research seminars where different researchers, who were also conducting research stays, presented the results of their work. I was invited to give a seminar myself and to participate in the open day, where various high school students visited the laboratories to learn about the work being done there”.