Ferran AntolínDeutsches Archäologisches Institut · Natural Sciences
Ferran Antolín
PhD
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221
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Introduction
Additional affiliations
July 2008 - September 2012
Education
September 2001 - June 2006
Publications
Publications (221)
The archaeobotanical record of 24 sites from the Neolithic period (5400–2300 cal bc) in the north-east of the Iberian Peninsula is evaluated. Remarkable amounts of data have recently been obtained for the early and middle Neolithic phases. Most of the studied sites were dry and they only yielded charred plant material. Among dry sites, several type...
This paper focuses on the high-resolution pollen analysis of one new pollen record from Lake Banyoles
(Girona, Spain) and its contextualisation with other archaeobotanical records (charcoal, seed and wood
remains) from the early Neolithic lakeshore settlement of La Draga. Around ca.7250 cal BP, coinciding
with the first settlement phase of La Draga...
This paper reviews the palaeobiogeography of Taxus baccata (yew) and the human social customs and traditions relating to this tree in southwest Europe. Pollen and archaeobotanical (charcoal, seeds and manufactured tools) evidence supplemented by some data from ethnographical sources have been considered in an integrated approach focused on the Holo...
A combined analysis of the faunal and charred plant macroremains from the early Neolithic lakeshore site of La Draga (Banyoles, Spain) is presented. The aim was to characterise the farming strategies practiced by the first Neolithic communities in the north-east of the Iberian Peninsula in terms of their degree of intensity. The joint discussion of...
Written sources provide plentiful information on the agricultural plant species present in al-Andalus, and they are also informative with regard to which species were introduced into the Iberian Peninsula during this period. This work approaches the matter from an archaeobotanical perspective, in order to make a first assessment of the species and...
Resumen Abric de les Obagues de Ratera es una pequeño abrigo situado bajo un bloque errático a 2320 m. de altitud en el Parque Nacional de Agüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici, en el Pirineo axial central. Como otros pequeños abrigos similares, alberga una extensa secuencia de ocupaciones que cubre diversos períodos de la prehistoria reciente. De l...
This study aimed to reconstruct the environmental conditions and the crop management practices and plant characteristics when agriculture appeared in western Europe. We analyzed oak charcoal and a large number of cereal caryopsides recovered from La Draga (Girona, Spain), an early (5300 to 4800 cal. BC) agricultural site from the Iberian Peninsula....
Call for papers now closed -- Call for papers for the 20th conference of the International Workgroup for Palaeoethnobotany (IWGP), which will take place in Groningen, the Netherlands in 2025. The prolonged deadline for abstract submission is 24.07.2024. Please see the document and the website https://archaeobotany.org/iwgp2025/ for further informat...
The Northern Garraf Territory, practically disconnected at the archaeological level in the 70s of the twentieth century, has seen in the last 45 years a paradigm shift that has ended up becoming, in the first quarter of the 21st century, one of the greatest coneguts of prehistory. Catalan. It has been based on the final investigations both by the C...
En este trabajo se presentan los datos sobre La Serreta, un asentamiento prehistórico al aire libre en el llano prelitoral catalán del Penedès (Barcelona). El yacimiento está formado por estructuras como silos, tumbas, fosos y posibles cabañas. En dos campañas sucesivas se documentaron 89 estructuras negativas, que pertenecen a cronologías entre el...
It has recently been observed, that a change in the crop spectrum happened during the so-called Middle Neolithic in France at ca. 4000 BC. An agricultural system based on free-threshing cereals (naked wheat and naked barley) seems to shift to one based on glume wheats. This is a major change for traditional farmers and this paper aims to shed light...
Abstract: the latest results obtained, both in the excavation work and during its processing, in the Can Sadurní cave (Begues,
Barcelona) have provided new information on the social and economic characteristics of the communities that, between ca. 4700-
3900 cal BC, populated the central coast of the NE of the Iberian Peninsula.
The use/s that thes...
Pelagonia is a mountain valley in North Macedonia that was densely occupied by early farming communities in the second half of the 7th and early 6th millennium bce. Archaeobotanical analysis is being done on material from three sites there, Vrbjanska Čuka, Veluška Tumba and Vlaho. This paper presents the results of archaeobotanical analyses of rema...
Domesticated opium poppy Papaver somniferum L. subsp. somniferum probably originated in the Western Mediterranean from its possible wild progenitor, Papaver somniferum L. subsp. setigerum and spread to other European regions. Seeds of opium poppy have been identified in different European regions since the Early Neolithic (from the 6th millennium c...
Recent study of Vlaho in Pelagonia confirms that it is the earliest known Neolithic settlement in North Mace-donia. Multidisciplinary research of the architecture and material reveals a complex enclosure site dating to the seventh millennium BC, with dozens of ditches, daub buildings, white painted pottery and domesticated plants and animals.
The use of resinous substances, certainly one of the earliest technologies developed by humans, was well-known by Holocene hunter-gatherers at the onset of the Neolithisation process across Europe. Recent research has revealed the use of birch bark tar in the central Mediterranean far from this taxon’s endemic regions both in the Paleolithic and Ne...
Archaeological heritage is currently affected by a large number of natural hazards that are a direct consequence of climate change and by a certain share of damages caused by human aggression or intervention. This is inevitably going to damage still unknown archaeological sites, affect existing exposed ones and generate new difficulties for the sus...
COORDINACIÓN
José S. Carrión
EQUIPO EDITORIAL
José S. Carrión, Manuel Munuera, Juan Ochando, Manuel Casas-Gallego
Secretaria Técnica y Maquetación
Maximiliano Gómez Rodríguez, Santiago Fernández, Manuel Munuera
Trabajo artístico y gráfico
Gabriela Amorós, Victoria Sánchez-Giner, Ariadna Amorós, Manuel Munuera, Manuel Fernández-Díaz, Pedro Pablo...
Climate change has impacted and will continue to alter our society in numerous ways, from extreme weather events that threaten livelihoods to more long-term climatic trends that force us into new ways of interacting with the environment. Archaeology is no exception.
Archaeological heritage is directly affected by climate change. There are coastal...
The scientific advances in recent years, in terms of both the systematisation of the research and the application of new analytical techniques, are allowing us to rediscover the Neolithic economy. The data we have show about agriculture and animal husbandry of the Neolithic that more than anything else, food in the Neolithic was extremely varied in...
The excellent preservation of the waterlogged botanical remains of the multiphase Neolithic pile-dwelling site of Zug-Riedmatt (Central Switzerland) yielded an ideal dataset to delve into the issue of plant economy of a community spanning several decades. The study identified a major change in crops where oil plants played a key role in the site’s...
Sixty-two 14 C dates are analyzed in combination with a recently established local floating tree-ring sequence for the Early Neolithic site of La Draga (Banyoles, northeast Iberian Peninsula). Archaeological data, radiometric and dendrochronological dates, as well as sedimentary and micro-stratigraphical information are used to build a Bayesian chr...
Pests appear to have accompanied humans and their crops since the beginning of farming. Nevertheless, their study is only rarely integrated into research on farming in prehistory. An assemblage of invertebrates and small mammals was recovered from the waterlogged layers of three wells at the Middle Neolithic site (4250–3700 cal B.C.) of Les Bagnole...
Neolithic pile dwelling sites are known particularly well North of the Alps, with a boom starting from ca. 4300 cal BC. These sites are famous for the excellent preservation conditions of organic material (wooden tools, textiles, fruit remains and foodstuffs have been preserved in many of them), but their origin is still unclear. In Europe, only th...
The main aim of this paper is to evaluate the potential of cave and rock-shelter sites for palaeoecological and archaeobotanical research. Climate conditions in the Mediterranean region and the depositional and post-depositional dynamics involved in the formation processes of open-air sites cause, in many cases, poor conservation of archaeobotanica...
North Macedonia is a crucial region for understanding the spread of agriculture into the Mediterranean and Central Europe. To date, however, the area has been subject to relatively limited archaeological research. Here, the authors present use-wear and archaeobotanical analyses on material from two Neolithic sites, Govrelevo and Vrbjanska Čuka, to...
Domesticated plants, gathered wild plants and possibly not fully domesticated but cultivated plants (e.g., poppy) were an integral part of the Neolithic diet. Data from 65 sites of the Early Neolithic phase (5800-4500 cal. BC) ranging from the territories of the North Eastern Iberian Peninsula to the Po valley is used to illustrate farmers' choices...
New research, which involves the systematic collection of sediment samples,
their treatment with the wash-over method, extraction of micro-refuse, and
their subsequent analysis, started being implemented at archaeological sites
in the Pelagonia Valley (North Macedonia) in the summer of 2019. Three
Early Neolithic (ca. 6000–5800 cal BC) sites are be...
Les Guixeres de Vilobí (Sant Martí Sarroca, Penedès, Barcelona) es un yacimiento al aire libre de unos 2500 m2 de extensión, excavados en un 10 % aproximadamente. Su estratigrafía tiene 4 fases documentadas del Neolítico Antiguo Cardial, Neolítico Antiguo Epicardial, Neolítico Postcardial y Neolítico Final. Las ocupaciones se caracterizan por nivel...
The development of agricultural societies is closely entangled with that of domestic animals and plants. Local and traditional domestic breeds and varieties are the result of millennia of selec- tion by farmers. DEMETER (2020-2025) is an international pro- ject which is aiming to characterize the changes in animal and plant agrobiodiversity (pigs,...
Vrbjanska Čuka is a tell site in the region of Pelagonia (Macedonia) established 8000 years ago by the Neolithic communities. Later it was used as an agricultural unit during the Roman era and the Middle Ages when it was also employed as a burial area. The excavations performed in the 1980s and during the last five years indicate a Neolithic farmin...
Investigation of the effects of domestication in the Southwestern Asian to European trajectory of Neolithization and subsequent periods so far has focused on morphological aspects. Besides coat colour and texture or body size and shape in animals as well as rachis structure or grain size and shape in plants, however, there have also been changes in...
Specialized and systematic underwater fieldwork at the prehistoric site of Ploča Mičov Grad at Gradište (North Macedonia) on the eastern shore of Lake Ohrid was undertaken in 2018 and 2019. It has substantiated the archeological site’s outstanding preservation condition, and furthermore proven the numerous construction timbers’ suitability for dend...
Previous reviews of Middle Neolithic agricultural practice (4400-3500 cal bc) in southern France have highlighted a change in crop assemblages after 4000 cal bc, with a reduction of naked wheat and an increase of emmer and partly of einkorn. The recent investigation of three wells from the site of Les Bagnoles (4250-3800 cal bc) in the periphery of...
The role of the adoption of farming economies in the transformation of mid-Holocene landscapes in Northeast Iberia is under discussion given that the Neolithization coincides with the cold climatic phase dated ca. 7500–7000 cal BP. The main aim of this paper is to assess whether human activities or climate were the main driver of vegetation changes...
Opium poppy (Papaver somniferum L. subsp. somniferum) was likely domesticated in the Western Mediterranean, where its putative wild ancestor is indigenous, and then spread to central and northern Europe. While opium poppy seeds are regularly identified in archaeobotanical studies, the absence of morphological criteria to distinguish the seeds of wi...
In the 12,000 years preceding the Industrial Revolution, human activities led to significant changes in land cover, plant and animal distributions, surface hydrology, and biochemical cycles. Earth system models suggest that this anthropogenic land cover change influenced regional and global climate. However, the representation of past land use in e...
This paper presents a compilation of radiocarbon dates associated with the process of arrival, development and consolidation of the first farming communities that settled between the northwestern Mediterranean Arch and the High Rhine area approximately between 5900 and 2000 cal BC covering a large geographical area previously out of the main focus...
The purpose of the last chapter in the book is to draw things together from a historical perspective. The first section opens with a few words about how Luca Cavalli-Sforza and I began working in collaboration on the Neolithic transition in Europe and then introduces the early simulation study of the spread of the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) in central...
Farming practices are embedded within a complex and interdependent system that involves crops and livestock and their management, soils, the environment and climate, as well as social and land-use dynamics. Changes in agricultural practices are therefore never simple or easy to track, but archaeobotanical and archaeozoological data generated over t...
The goal of this paper is to discuss the validity of radiocarbon dates as a source of knowledge for explaining social dynamics over a large region and a long period of time. We have carefully selected c. 1000 14C dates for the time interval 8000–4000 cal BC within the northwestern Mediterranean area (NE Iberian Peninsula, SE France, N Italy) and Sw...
Abstract This paper aims to define the first chrono-cultural framework on the domestication and early diffusion of the opium poppy using small-sized botanical remains from archaeological sites, opening the way to directly date minute short-lived botanical samples. We produced the initial set of radiocarbon dates directly from the opium poppy remain...
The objective of this paper is to assess foodstuff storage throughout Recent Prehistory (5600–50 BCE) from the standpoint of the three different types (household, surplus and supra-household) identified in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula. The volumetric data of the underground silos serves as a proxy to evaluate the link between them and the...
En este capítulo se analizan las 40 dataciones 14C disponibles para el yacimiento
neolítico de La Draga y se calcula un modelo cronológico bayesiano utilizando
el programa informático ChronoModel 2.0, cuyos aspectos generales se han
presentado en el capítulo 17. El programa nos permite integrar la estratigrafía
de los diferentes sectores excavados,...
Crop choice, gathered plants and household activities at the beginnings of farming in the Pelagonia Valley of North Macedonia - Volume 94 Issue 376 - Ferran Antolín, Amalia Sabanov, Goce Naumov, Raül Soteras
The detection of direct archaeological remains of alcoholic beverages and their production is still a challenge to archaeological science, as most of the markers known up to now are either not durable or diagnostic enough to be used as secure proof. The current study addresses this question by experimental work reproducing the malting processes and...
The evolution of storage features in prehistory hasbeen linked to larger socio-economic and demo-graphic changes. The investigation of such an evolu-tion in the archaeological record, however, isrestricted in scope, both geographically and chrono-logically. This article offers a comparative approach tounderstanding the development of Neolithic to L...
Wooden digging sticks are one of the earliest kinds of tool in human evolution, and provably one of the most widely used in prehistory. This paper will focus on its role in the early agriculture development focusing on the case of the digging sticks assemblage of the Early Neolithic waterlogged site of la Draga (Spain). Ethnographically different u...
Pour le Néolithique moyen, deux phases d’occupations distinctes sont attestées au sein de l’espace exploré entre 2012 et 2015. La première est marquée par 72, la seconde par 22 structures. La question est maintenant de comprendre comment ces deux occupations se situent l’une par rapport à l’autre : s’agit-il d’une transition progressive d’une occup...
https://presses-universitaires.univ-amu.fr/bagnoles-a-lisle-sorgue
This paper explores the first maritime westward expansion of crops across the Adriatic and the northern coast of the western Mediterranean. Starting in Greece at c.6500 cal BC and following the coastline to the Andalusian region of Spain to c.4500 cal BC, the presence of the main cereal, pulse, oil and fibre crops are recorded from 122 sites. Patte...
Insect pests affecting standing and stored crops can cause severe damage and reduce yields considerably. Was this also the case in Neolithic Europe? Did early farming populations take a certain amount of harvest loss into account? Did they decide to change crops or rotate them when they became too infested? Did they obtain new crops from neighbouri...