Mathieu Duval

I am currently a Ramón y Cajal (Senior) Research Fellow at CENIEH, Spain. I have previously worked for 7.5 years (2009-2016) as Research Scientist and Head of the ESR dating laboratory at CENIEH, before spending 4 years (2016-2020) as an ARC Future Fellow in the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution (ARCHE) at Griffith University, Australia. Between 2014 and 2016 I was also the recipient of a Marie Curie International Outgoing fellowship. I received my doctorate in Prehistory from the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle (Paris, France) in November 2008.

I am a Quaternary geochronologist specialising in Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) and Uranium-series dating methods. Over the last ten to fifteen years, I have developed an innovative research profile that combines methodological as well as dating application studies in geo-archaeological contexts. So far, most of my investigation has been dedicated to the development and application of the ESR and U-series method to Lower Palaeolithic sites in the Mediterranean area, by dating either fossil teeth or optically bleached sedimentary quartz grains. The results of this work have contributed to refine the age of some of the oldest archaeological sites in Southern Europe and Northern Africa (e.g., Atapuerca Gran Dolina, Barranco León, Fuente Nueva-3, Vallparadís EVT7, Ain Boucherit). I have also recently participated to the direct dating of key human fossils such as Homo naledi from the Rising Star complex (South Africa), the oldest Homo sapiens found outside Africa, at Misliya Cave (Israel), the human finger bone from Al Wusta in Saudi Arabia or the direct dating of Homo antecessor from Atapuerca Gran Dolina TD6.