Agricultural Growth in Prehistoric Europe. An approach to technological, economic and social change
The AGER project, funded by the “Rientro dei Cervelli – Rita Levi Montalcini” program, aims to study the agricultural growth in Prehistoric Europe, from the beginning of the Neolithic to its most recent phases.
The development of agriculture had a huge impact on human history. Its diffusion has produced, in a few thousand years, an unprecedented demographic boom in the Near East and Europe, with a gradual transition from tribal to class, hierarchical, societies. Within this process, agriculture has played a decisive role. Agricultural production is one of the main sources of food for humans and animals.
The spread of farming fostered changes in the organization of labour, in the forms of settlement and land management. For this reason, agricultural change can be used as a tool to approximate past demographic and social transformations.
Recent methodological advances offer new opportunities to obtain evidence of technological change in agriculture. Some key approaches are: quantitative functional analysis of stone tools, macrolithic tools, wooden tools; the study of pollen, phytoliths and starch grains from tool surfaces and adhesive substances.
These techniques, together with the creation of a more precise chronological framework and the availability of paleoenvironmental data, opens new perspectives for better understanding the dynamics of demographic change. The project focuses on four areas: (1) Cyprus and the Near East, (2) the Southern Balkans, (3) the Adriatic Basin, (4) and the north-eastern sector of Spain.
The study of archaeological contexts selected from these four chronological and geographical windows will allow us to observe the evolution of agricultural techniques and thus understand the impact of farming on the social and economic transformations that human societies have undergone since the beginning of the Neolithic.
Contact: Niccolò Mazzucco
Research outputs
Mineo, M., Gibaja, J.F., MAZZUCCO, N. (editors) (2023). The Submerged Site of La Marmotta (Rome, Italy): Decrypting a Neolithic Society. Oxbow Books. ISBN: 9781789258714
Gibaja, J. F., & MAZZUCCO, N. (2023). The use of long blades and projectile points in the Western Mediterranean. Examples from the domestic and funerary sphere. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 51, 104109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2023.104109
MAZZUCCO, N., Mineo, M., Arobba, D., Caramiello, R., Caurso Fermé, L., Gassin, B., Guilbeau, D., Ibáñez, J.J., MORANDI, L. F., Mozota, M., Pichon, F., Portillo, M., Rageot, M., Remolins, G., Rottoli, M., Gibaja, J. F. (2022). Multiproxy study of 7500-year-old wooden sickles from the Lakeshore Village of La Marmotta, Italy. Scientific Reports 12: 14976. www.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18597-8
MAZZUCCO, N., Sabanov, A., Antolín, F., Naumov, G., Fidanoski, L., & Gibaja, J. (2022). The spread of agriculture in south-eastern Europe: New data from North Macedonia. Antiquity 96(385), 15-33. www.doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2021.32
Huet, T., Cubas, M., Gibaja, J. F., Oms, F. X., & MAZZUCCO, N. (2022). NeoNet Dataset. Radiocarbon Dates for the Late Mesolithic/Early Neolithic Transition in the North Central-Western Mediterranean Basin. Journal of Open Archaeology Data, 10(3). www.doi.org/10.5334/joad.87
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