The multiple Eudald Carbonell: The various roles of Catalonia’s most popular archaeologist

Abstract

Eudald Carbonell is mainly known for being the co-director of the Atapuerca research project, a hominid site in Northern Spain that boasts the «oldest European». In the course of his career as an archaeologist, he has become a highly visible figure, not least because of his incessant attempts to communicate his ideas to the general public. In these past four decades, Carbonell has taken on a host of diverse roles: scientific but also social and political ones. The political and scientific context of Catalonia and Spain since the early 1970s proves crucial in these activities. Carbonell’s claim to belong to a «peripheral» scientific community (be it Catalan or Spanish) is a central element in the construction of these roles. At the same time, Carbonell provides an instructive example of the «medialization» of science, transforming himself from an outsider into a celebrity and ultimately into a commodity.