Solange Rigaud

Solange Rigaud (Ph.D. Université de Bordeaux) is a CNRS researcher. Prior to joining CIRHUS, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Life Sciences and Biotechnologies of the University of Ferrara (Italy) and the Department of Prehistory of the University of Liège (Belgium). She approaches archaeology with the belief that results in the field of human evolution benefit from the application of theoretical approaches and analytical methods developed in other disciplines in both the social and natural sciences. Her research deals primarily with the complex symbolic behavior associated with the transition to farming in Europe and Western Asia. She uses personal ornaments as a cultural proxy to evaluate the profound social changes that affected the last foraging and the first farming societies and to identify how the cultural geography of Europe was transformed during this period. She focuses on the mechanisms of cultural transmission/replacement during the transition to farming by taking into account the impact of geographic boundaries and population dynamics. She examines ancient beads at the microscopic level and uses advanced analytical techniques based on comparative reference collections. She also combines multidisciplinary data with the development of efficient statistical and GIS analytical tools. She is involved in numerous field projects in Southwestern Europe and Cyprus.