Miss Rebecca Ferreira

I hold a BA Hons in Archaeology (2013-2016) and a Masters in Maritime Archaeology from the University of Southampton (2016-2018). I began my postgraduate research at Southampton in 2020, following a successful scholarship application to the South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership 2 (SWW DTP2). I am supervised by Dr Rachel Bynoe and Professor Fraser Sturt from the University of Southampton and Professor Duncan Garrow from the University of Reading.

Following the completion of my MA in Maritime Archaeology, I worked as a Marine Archaeology Consultant on offshore developments at Cotswold Archaeology and then Maritime Archaeology Ltd (the commercial arm of the Maritime Archaeology Trust). During this time, I gained valuable experience supporting offshore developments in the North Sea, English Channel and Irish Sea at various stages of the Environmental Impact Assessment process. I also had the opportunity to research and dive on the site of Bouldnor Cliff, the only in situ submerged Mesolithic site in the UK, located in the northwest Solent and managed by the Maritime Archaeology Trust.

During an early point of my masters, it became abundantly clear to me that learning to dive would transform my ability to investigate Mesolithic submerged landscapes. So, I began to gain recreational qualifications to achieve this. I am now a qualified HSE Scuba commercial diver and have experience diving on a variety of archaeological projects in the North Sea, English Channel and Solent Waters. I was one of the core dive team for the 'Investigating submerged landscapes at Happisburgh' project, run by Dr Rachel Bynoe at the University of Southampton. The project involves diving and geophysical data-collection off the coast of Happisburgh, UK, with the aim of generating new data and relating the offshore deposits with the known onshore sites and their associated deposits.

Since the first year of my undergraduate degree, I have had a keen interest in earlier prehistory, with a particular focus on the Mesolithic period in northwest Europe. I have in more recent years, however, engaged more frequently with the Palaeolithic period through my involvement with the Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins (CAHO) research group. In 2020, I became one of the co-organisers for the CAHO Seminar Series, with the aim of providing more of a platform for the submerged landscape research in human origins as well as encouraging more of a Mesolithic presence in the discussions of human origins (after all, period boundaries are arbitrary!). Further to this, I am a co-chair for the Unravelling the Palaeolithic 2023 conference taking place at Avenue Campus, University of Southampton on the 31st of March to the 2nd of April 2023. 

In 2021, I was part of the organising committee for the Postgraduate Researchers Archaeology Symposium (PGRAS). PGRAS is the Archaeology Department’s annual student-led conference that encourages postgraduate researchers to showcase their research year-by-year.