Angela Trentacoste

Angela Trentacoste is a zooarchaeologist and archaeological scientist and a Lecturer in Archaeological Science at QUB. Her research aims to address the interplay between socio-political organisation, environmental exploitation, and animal economies. This approach views livestock as more than the stuff of subsistence, and rather centres their role as active participants in political economy and landscape creation. 

As a faunal specialist, she have expertise across the breadth of contemporary zooarchaeology, including recovery strategy, fieldwork, assemblage studies, large-scale data synthesis, and the integration of state-of-the-art biomolecular techniques. She has co-developed new digital tools to improve biometric studies across the discipline, now in use by international research groups (‘zoolog’ R package). 

As an archaeological scientist she specialises in isotope analysis and the reconstruction of animal feeding and mobility patterns, with special attention on proto-historic and Classical societies. 

She is active in fieldwork, providing expertise in environmental archaeology at numerous excavations and coordinating environmental reserach programmes in Italy at Tharros (Sardinia) and Falerii Novi (Lazio). 

Recent projects include:

• Principal Investigator on the 2026 ERC Consolidator Grant FEROCI - Feeding Roman Italy: Continuities and Innovations in animal production from urbanisation to empire
• Principal Investigator of the UrbanHerds, a Humboldt-funded project investigating urban provisioning and environmental exploitation in Archaic Italy through herding practices.