Dr Emilio Rodríguez-Álvarez
I am Emilio Rodríguez-Álvarez, a Galician archaeologist specialized in the archaeology of ancient Greece, the study of pottery technology, geographic Information Systems and maritime archaeology. I am interested in everything, theory and practice, that improves the work on the site and the lab. I finished my B.A. in the University of Santiago de Compostela (Galicia) and took my M.A. from University of Reading (UK); after working in Galicia I moved to the University of Arizona (US), where I obtained my Ph.D in Mediterranean Archaeology, with a minor in Classics.
Although now I work mainly in Greece, I have participated in several archaeological researches in different areas of the world, including Galicia (NW of Spain), the Balearic islands, Portugal, and Peru. Most of my research is centered on the analysis of the behavioral chain of the Greek pottery during the Archaic period and Classical periods and the establishment of new typological classifications that include technological and functional aspects. This work was supported by the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, funding my stay at the archaeological site of ancient Korinth. But ancient diving techniques are my “secret” project, difficult to fund but extremely exciting to research. In the Freediving Library you can find links to all my works on a topic that clearly breaks the invisible line between land and water, a line that for divers, ancient and modern, actually never existed. You can access most of my publications in my Orcid ID, Academia.edu, and ResearchGate profiles.
Dr Mari Yamasaki
I am Mari Yamasaki, archaeologist specialized 
in Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology for the Bronze and Iron Age periods. I am interested in the complex relationship between humans and the sea, from seafaring and connectivity, to fishing and coastal subsistence, to the deep entanglement between human cognition and the seascape. I completed my PhD on the conceptualisation of the sea in the Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz (Germany), where I also taught courses in Mediterranean and Cypriot archaeology. My fieldwork includes excavations and surveys in Italy and Cyprus, both on land and underwater.
With my current project I decided to take the plunge and investigate the perception and experiential dimension of diving in antiquity. I am now based at the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology of the University of Warsaw where my research focuses on concepts of underwater spatiality in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean in the course of the second and first millennium BCE. I consider the cognitive and sensorial aspects of submarine spaces, both real and imagined, proceeding with the analysis and (re-)interpretation of the known accounts of underwater settings. You can find more on my Underwater Realms project here.
Last but not least, I am thankful for the generous funding by Polonez BIS grant 2021/43/P/HS3/01355, co-funded by the Polish National Science Centre and the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 945339.