Thomas X. Schuhmacher

He graduated in Pre- and Protohistory from the University of Tübingen (1991) and got his PhD in Pre- and Protohistory from the same University (1998) with a work on the Argaric household pottery in the site of Fuente Álamo (Almeria). 

From 2005 to 2012 he headed two international research projects on contacts between the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb during the Chalcolithic and the Early Bronze Age and ivory exchange networks in the Western Mediterranean. From 2012 to 2015 he was Associate Professor in the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology at the Autonomous University of Madrid. 

His research interests have ranged from Neolithic and Early Neolithic to Ancient Bronze in the Iberian Peninsula. He has focused on questions of medium- and long-distance contacts and exchanges across the Mediterranean and with North Africa, and within that especially on the identification of ivory, its provenance, exchange, transformation, use and its social value. 

Since 2016 he has been a scientific collaborator in the  Department of the German Archaeological Institute in Madrid, co-leading an interdisciplinary and international project on the northern part of the big Chalcolithic settlement of Valencina de la Concepción. He is a “Non-Tenured Professor” (“Privatdozent”) at the University of Würzburg (Germany).