Staff profile

I am an historical archaeologist working on colonialism, decolonisation, conflict and resistance in Southern Europe and in the Atlantic World, and committed to the ongoing struggle to decolonise the discipline. I studied History and Archaeology at the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, where I obtained my BA (2005) and MA (2010), and later completed a PhD in Anthropology at Binghamton University (2017). I joined the Department of Archaeology as an Assistant Professor in Historical Archaeology in the summer of 2020, after having lived in Portugal, Brazil and the United States for several years. Prior to coming to Durham, I was a researcher with the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi in Brazil (2010), a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, Brown University (2019-20), and a Postdoctoral Associate in the Cultural Heritage and Preservation Studies program at the Department of Art History, Rutgers University (2017-19). I am also affiliated with the Centre for Archaeology at the Universidade de Lisboa, where I have been a junior researcher funded by Portugal’s Foundation for Science and Technology.

Selected current projects

Cacheu Archaeological Project

This community-based project focuses on the foundation of Cacheu in today’s Republic of Guinea-Bissau and the development of power relations across economic, social, political, and cultural lines between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. Our team is particularly interested in the material circumstances that enabled the transatlantic trade of enslaved people, as well as the variety of responses produced by communities along the Cacheu river basin. We are also interested in the legacies of colonialism, and how the heritage of slavery and forced labour is mobilised by communities and Guinea-Bissauan state agents in nation-building politics. Find out more here.

Heritage from Below. Drežnica: Traces and Memories 1941-1945 

Between 1941 and 1945, the region of Drežnica, in central Croatia, was occupied and repeatedly attacked by Axis forces. Italian fascists, Nazis and their local collaborators sought to suppress the resistance and dislodge partisan fighters from a vast network of camps, safe houses, and cave shelters across the forest. In this community-based project, our team aims to bring visibility to multi-temporal heritage practices enabled by experiences of collective pride, trauma and healing, and respond to current local demands for technical expertise. Click here to find out more.

• Community archaeology
• Visual culture
• Historical archaeology
• Archaeology of the contemporary past
• Colonialism
• Decolonisation
• African diaspora
• Conflict archaeology
• Plantationocene
• Slavery and forced labour
• Politics of heritage
• Critical heritage studies
• Sensorial archaeology
• Decolonial practices

Authored book

• Coelho, R. G. (2018). O Arqueólogo Cordial: A Junta Nacional da Educação e o Enquadramento Institucional da Arqueologia Portuguesa durante o Estado Novo (1936-1974). Imprensa de Ciências Sociais

Chapter in book

• Coelho, R., Arvela, R., Costa, A., Freire, D., Freitas, M., Gabriel, S., Gomes, S., Lopes, M., M., M. P., Oliveira, C., Simões, S., & Tereso, J. (2023). Ecologias da Liberdade: Materialidades da Escravidão e Pós-Emancipação no Mundo Atlântico. Um Projeto em Curso em Portugal e na Guiné-Bissau. In J. Arnaud, C. Neves, & A. Martins (Eds.), Arqueologia em Portugal 2023: Estado da Questão. Associação dos Arqueólogos Portugueses
• Arvela, R., Costa, A., Freitas, M. C., & Coelho, R. G. (2023). Evolução Ambiental do Estuário do Rio Cacheu, Guiné-Bissau: Dados Preliminares. In J. Arnaud, C. Neves, & A. Martins (Eds.), Arqueologia em Portugal 2023: Estado da Questão. Associação dos Arqueólogos Portugueses
• Coelho, R. G. (2021). Heritage and the Visual Ecology of the Plantationocene. In T. R. Bangstad, & Þ. Pétursdóttir (Eds.), Heritage Ecologies (350-368). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315101019
• González-Ruibal, A., Franco Fernández, M. A., Rodríguez Simón, P., Ayán Vila, X., Garfi, S., Coelho, R. G., Herrero, X., Laíño Piñeiro, A., Marín Suárez, C., Marquerie, J., Martínez Barrio, C., Ruiz Casero, L. A., Santamarina, J., Señorán, J. M., & Vos, J. D. (2020). No Pasaron: Arqueología de la Batalla de Madrid (8-23 de Noviembre de 1936). In A. Pérez-Juez Gil, & J. Morín de Pablos (Eds.), Arqueología de la Guerra Civil y la Dictadura Española (33-48). British Archaeological Reports
• Ayán Vila, X., & Coelho, R. G. (2020). Memoria y Paisaje de una Guerrilla Transfronteriza: Arqueología de la Resistencia Antifranquista en Galicia y el Norte de Portugal. In T. Abelló i Güell, G. C. Cattini, V. Gavín Munté, J. Ibarz Gelabert, C. Santacana i Torres, Q. Solé, & A. Vives (Eds.), Postguerres / Aftermaths of War (1100-1117)
• Coelho, R. G. (2020). Como Descolonizar a Arqueologia Portuguesa?. In J. M. Arnaud, A. Martins, & C. Neves (Eds.), Arqueologia em Portugal 2020: Estado da Questão (25-39). Associação dos Arqueólogos Portugueses. https://doi.org/10.21747/978-989-8970-25-1/arqa02
• Coelho, R. G. (2020). The Politics of Interpretation in Historical Archaeology. In C. E. Orser Jr., P. P. A. Funari, S. Lawrence, J. Symonds, & A. Zarankin (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Global Historical Archaeology (298-316). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315202846
• Coelho, R. G. (2015). An Empire of Clay: Ceramics and Discipline in the Early Modern Portuguese Empire. In R. M. Van Dyke (Ed.), Practicing Materiality (100-123). University of Arizona Press
• Coelho, R. G., & Marques, F. (2013). Processo de contato e primórdios da colonização na baixa bacia do Amazonas (sécs. XVI-XVIII). In A. Teixeira, & J. A. Bettencourt (Eds.), Velhos e Novos Mundos. Congresso Internacional de Arqueologia Moderna (277-284). CHAM
• Coelho, R. G. (2005). Leiria num tempo de mudança: Aproximação à transição da Idade do Bronze Final para a Idade do Ferro. In S. Carvalho (Ed.), Habitantes e Habitats – Pré e Proto-História na Bacia do Lis (118-134). Câmara Municipal de Leiria

Doctoral Thesis

• Coelho, R. G. Sensorial Regime of ‘Second Slavery’: Landscape of Enslavement in the Paraíba Valley (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). (Thesis). [Awarding Organisation: Unknown]. https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1618376

Journal Article

• Wang, X., Bocksberger, G., Arandjelovic, M., Agbor, A., Angedakin, S., Aubert, F., Ayimisin, E. A., Bailey, E., Barubiyo, D., Bessone, M., Bobe, R., Bonnet, M., Boucher, R., Brazzola, G., Brewer, S., Lee, K. C., Carvalho, S., Chancellor, R., Cipoletta, C., Cohen, H., …Oelze, V. M. (2024). Strontium isoscape of sub-Saharan Africa allows tracing origins of victims of the transatlantic slave trade. Nature Communications, 15, Article 10891. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-55256-0
• Semple, S., & Gomes Coelho, R. (2022). Materialising inequalities in past, present and future. World Archaeology, 54(4), 493-501. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2022.2233804
• Coelho, R. G. (2019). An Archaeology of Decolonization: Imperial Intimacies in Contemporary Lisbon. Journal of Social Archaeology, 19(2), 181-205. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469605319845971
• Coelho, R. G., & Ayán Vila, X. (2019). Cambedo, 1946: Carta sobre o Achamento de Portugal. Vestígios - Revista Latino-Americana de Arqueologia Histórica, 13(2), 63-87. https://doi.org/10.31239/vtg.v2i13.15815
• Ayán Vila, X., Franco Fernández, M. A., Gago García-Brabo, X., García Rodríguez, S., Coelho, R. G., Laiño Piñeiro, A., Martínez Valcárcel, R., Otero Vilariño, C., Porto Tenreiro, Y., Rodríguez Simón, P., & Señorán Martín, J. M. (2018). Nas Orixes da Ribeira Sacra: A necrópole altomedieval do castro de San Lourenzo (Cereixa, A Pobra do Brollón, Lugo)
• Ayán Vila, X., Franco Fernández, M. A., Gago García-Brabo, X., García Rodríguez, S., Coelho, R. G., Laiño Piñeiro, A., Martínez Valcárcel, R., Otero Vilariño, C., Porto Tenreiro, Y., Rodríguez Simón, P., & Señorán Martín, J. M. (2018). O castro de San Lourenzo (Cereixa, A Pobra do Brollón, Lugo): Unha coroa mineira romana no val do río Saa
• Tejerizo García, C., Fermín Maguire, P. P., Coelho, R. G., & Marín Suárez, C. (2017). ¿Excepción o Normalidad? Apuntes para una Arqueología de los Centros de Internamiento de Extranjeros (CIEs)
• Coelho, R. G. (2016). The Garden of Refugees. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 3(2), 261-270. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.30805
• Coelho, R. G. (2010). Telhais. Uma abordagem aos fabricos de cerâmica de construção em Alhandra (séculos XVIII-XX)
• Gonzaga, M., & Coelho, R. G. (2010). Alhandra: a greve de 8 e 9 de Maio de 1944
• Gonzaga, M., & Coelho, R. G. (2005). Temos Fome!. Historia, 76, 42-47

Newspaper/Magazine Article

• Gomes Coelho, R. (2023). Herdade da Silveirona. Writing With Light
• Barreiros, I. B., Coelho, R. G., Marcos, P. M., & Pereira, P. S. (2021). The Unbearable Lightness of Anachronism: Practices of Monument-making and the Guardians of Historical Consensus. GSG Magazine for Contemporary Art and Social Issues

Other (Print)

• Coelho, R. G. (2021). The juniper tree. A conversation with Michael B. Schiffer and Randall H. McGuire
• Coelho, R. G., & Hamilakis, Y. (2021). An archaeologist of images: A conversation with Edouard Duval-Carrié and Anthony Bogues
• Coelho, R. G. (2018). Topographies of Freedom
• Coelho, R. G. (2016). Retratos para Después de una Guerra