Ana Bettencourt, Telmo Jorge Pereira and Hugo Aluai Sampaio are part of the international SeTeCDym-NW project.

The main objectives of the project are:

– to contextualise and share the knowledge acquired in different regions of the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula during Early and Late Prehistory, and to further the study of settlement, economic and cultural dynamics throughout Prehistory.
– to study the transition between the last Neanderthal communities and the dispersal of Homo sapiens in the western and inland parts of the Iberian Peninsula.
– to analyse the technological evolution of the communities that inhabited the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle and Upper Pleistocene, and the mechanisms by which they adapted to lithological constraints.
– to compare, both technologically and chronologically, the settlements in the interior of the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula with those in the Cantabrian region, the Western Meseta and northern Portugal.
– to study the palaeo-economy and subsistence strategies of prehistoric communities, particularly with regard to patterns of exploitation of lithic and faunal resources in mountainous environments, patterns of raw material mobility within the region, and the identification of their regional and economic networks.
– to reconstruct, from a palaeoenvironmental and palaeogeographical perspective, the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula throughout the Pleistocene and the early Holocene.

– to study symbolic territories and networks through portable and rock art in the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula. Survey and characterisation of outdoor and cave rock art sites, with a view to reconstructing the cultural networks of prehistoric groups and exploring the relationship between the Franco-Cantabrian and Atlantic coasts.
– to continue promoting the training of young researchers and consolidating lines of research on the Palaeolithic and the early Holocene in the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula.
– to enhance the prehistoric heritage of the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula, particularly in terms of public outreach, socio-cultural enhancement and rural development, in collaboration with local stakeholders.

The team comprises researchers from various Spanish universities (Oviedo and Santiago de Compostela) and Portuguese universities (Universities of Minho and Coimbra), foundations (the Côa Parque Foundation; the Catalan Institute of Human Palaeoecology and Social Evolution) and collaborators from the Universities of Vienna (Austria), Tübingen (Germany) and the University of Warsaw (Poland).