F.Xavier Oms

F.Xavier Oms
University of Barcelona | UB · Department of Prehistory, Ancient History and Archaeology

PhD

About

126
Publications
58,204
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Introduction
My research is focused on the transition between the Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic populations of the western Mediterranean, and their development and extension during the Neolithisation process. Analysis of radiocarbon dates, chrono-typological study ofEarly Neolithic pottery and the field-work are the main tools in my research.
Additional affiliations
September 2016 - September 2021
University of Barcelona
Position
  • Lecturer (associate)
Education
September 2000 - September 2004
University of Barcelona
Field of study
  • History

Publications

Publications (126)
Article
Full-text available
The microstratigraphic study of the Cova Colomera (Sant Esteve de la Sarga, Lleida, Spain) confirms that there are several discontinuous ovicaprid stabling episodes in the Late Cardial Neolithic sequence ( c . 5250–4780 cal BC). There are episodes with and without combustion traces. From the burnt episodes, it has been possible to identify bedding...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
The NeoNet dataset aims to provide a new research tool for the study of the pioneer farming front (i.e. Neolithisation) in the North Central and North Western Mediterranean basin by focusing on the period of transition from a foraging to a farming economy (ca. 7000 to 3500 cal BC). The complete dataset is formed by the elencoc14.tsv file, a datafra...
Data
Esecutore: Thomas Huet, Miriam Cubas, Juan F. Gibaja, Xavier Oms, Niccolò Mazzucco Direzione scientifica: Niccolò Mazzucco The NeoNet dataset collects all available, published, radiocarbon dates associated with the Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic transition in the North Central-Western Mediterranean watershed. The dataset counts 2506 radiocar...
Article
Full-text available
Objective This study seeks to contribute to the current understanding of dietary variation in the late Prehistory of the northeastern Iberian Peninsula by examining buccal dental microwear patterns alongside archeological data from the same populations. Materials and Methods Teeth from 84 adult individuals from eight distinct samples spanning the...
Article
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...
Article
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...
Article
Objective: Molar incisor hypomineralisation (MIH) is a developmental defect of enamel affecting the first permanent molars and often the incisors and affecting approximately 13% of the current population worldwide. Here, we aim to highlight potential differential diagnoses of MIH in archaeological collections (taphonomic discoloration, amelogenesi...
Article
This paper aims to determine the chronology of one of the most significant Neolithic contexts in the Northeast of the Iberian Peninsula: the Can Tintorer mining complex (Gavà, Barcelona). Based on the statistical analysis and Bayesian modelling of a total of 23 radiocarbon dates, 5 of which have not been published until now, the work addresses the...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Chapter
Full-text available
En los últimos años, se ha vivido en el NE de la península Ibérica un fuerte incremento de los datos acerca de las primeras fases de la neolitización, ya sea a través de la cultura material como del número de dataciones radiocarbónicas. En este contexto, los ejes de investigación han ido basculando según los contextos de investigación de zonas limí...
Chapter
Full-text available
El litoral central mediterrani i les serralades prelitorals constitueixen una àrea privilegiada, d'una banda, per constatar l'avenç en l'estudi de les primeres societats camperoles en els darrers decennis, i de l'altra, per mostrar l'estat del coenixement i la formulació de nous reptes en la recerca. Tant a la gran plana costera barcelonina com a l...
Chapter
Full-text available
El desenvolupament de les activitats econòmiques inherents a la implantació de les activitats agrícoles i ramaderes del neolític comporta una creixent especialització tècnica. Sovint, aquesta és visible a partir de l’explotació de recursos específics, del desenvolupament de tècniques adients per a la manufactura dels béns de consum i de noves modal...
Article
Full-text available
The development of the economic activities inherent to the establishment of Neolithic farming activities entails an increasing technical specialization. This is often visible through the exploitation of specific resources, the development of suitable techniques for the manufacture of consumption goods as well as new ways of using and consuming them...
Chapter
This work presents the results of a study of the Early Neolithic pottery remains from El Mirador cave. The pottery selection is relatively large considering the 6 m2 test pit from which it came. The morpho-typological approach with which these pottery sherds were analyzed has established that medium-sized vessels predominate in the assemblage, whil...
Article
Full-text available
Large, conglomerate caves in north-eastern Iberia have been significant places since the Neolithic through to historical times; however, their significance during the Palaeolithic has barely been explored. This project is the first systematic study of the use of these iconic geological landmarks among Pleistocene hunter-gatherers.
Poster
Full-text available
ABSTRACT Neolithisation process arrived at the Iberian Peninsula (IP) around 5,500 calBC, having diverse impacts on genomic and cultural diversity. During the Late Neolithic–Chalcolithic, changes occurred at funerary and cultural material level, with also evidence of narrower exchange networks. Genomic diversity decrease at this period suggests hum...
Article
Full-text available
Neolithisation was a relatively fast process that affected both the interior and coastal zones of the Iberian Peninsula, but it was also a heterogeneous process that had diverse impacts on genomic and cultural diversity. In the Late Neolithic–Chalcolithic, a change in funerary practices, cultural material and trade networks occurred, and genomic he...
Article
Objectives This study analyzes and compares dental microwear textures on occlusal and buccal surfaces from the same tooth to determine if using these surfaces in tandem can provide complementary data for dietary reconstructions. Materials and methods Cova de la Guineu is a Late Neolithic‐Chalcolithic burial cave located in Font‐Rubí (Barcelona, Sp...
Chapter
We present our experiences with a series of ‘forgotten groups’ that empower themselves through outreach activities. The authors coordinate or advise different activities, but the protagonists and promoters are those people, the ‘forgotten groups’. This work includes a description of objectives, methods and practices when coordinating inclusive outr...
Article
Cova Colomera is one of the most important archaeological sites to explain early herding activities in the Central Pre-Pyrenees (Iberian Peninsula). Fieldworks have provided a stratigraphy that shows short occupations of the cave by Neolithic and Bronze Age human groups. The sedimentological description has revealed fumiers deposits, that are chara...
Chapter
Full-text available
This paper reviews two key aspects in the sphere of the beliefs of the Neolithic groups that, during the Taula Rodona de Montserrat, were almost ignored, because the available information was almost non-existent. So the data obtained in recent years has been a major leap forward. Contextualization of the artistic record has improved, and funerary e...
Chapter
Full-text available
This work updates the data on the Early Neolithic of a territory scarcely represented in the Taula Rodona de Montserrat, due to lack of data or continuity of previous studies. Since then, research in Neolithic open-air sites and caves, has been prolific, increasing knowledge about the Cardial Neolithic and, especially, the Epicardial Neolithic, a w...
Chapter
La Serreta site (Vilafranca del Penedès, Barcelona province) was excavated between 2009 and 2010, as a result of a preventive intervention after the works conducted to renew different access to the AP-7 highway in the area of Alt Penedès. During the archaeological fieldworks a total of 89 structures were excavated, dated between the ancient Cardial...
Article
Full-text available
The Cova Colomera is located in the pre-Pyrenees, at a central point of a set of natural paths traditionally used by shepherds for herd movements. The Early Neolithic occupations documented in this cave (5250–4780 cal. BC) make it a key point for understanding the beginning of husbandry in the area. In this work, we present a zooarchaeological stud...
Book
Full-text available
L’any 2016 es va posar al descobert una cista intacta al Camp de la Bruna, a Lladurs (el Solsonès), a causa d’uns treballs agrícoles. Aleshores, el Servei d’Arqueologia i Paleontologia va decidir realitzar una excavació d’urgència per tal de documentar-la, intervenció que va proporcionar uns interessants resultats d’una cista del neolític mitjà-rec...
Article
Since 2013 we built a working group formed by researchers, educators, social workers, communicators and educational psychologists to bring archaeological research to all types of audiences, especially those with limited access to scientific dissemination programmes. In particular, we refer to people with psychological disorders or physical disabili...
Chapter
Le Mésolithique se met en place dans un climat tempéré, celui de l’Holocène. L’environnement montagnard pyrénéen induit de nombreux contrastes entre les deux versants, suivant l’altitude, et en fonction de la proximité du littoral atlantique ou méditerranéen. En règle générale, on considère que les paysages sont alors dominés par une forêt de feuil...
Book
Full-text available
In 1976 and 1977, a research group made up of researchers from the south of France and Catalonia carried out archaeological work in the Cova del Toll. For various reasons, those works were scarcely published. The present work details fieldwork, stratigraphic information, dating (with 9 new ones) and all archaeological materials are re-studied. At t...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Conference Paper
Farming was one of the most significant events in human history, driving major biological and cultural change globally. The peasant way of life arrived in the Iberian Peninsula (IP) about 7500 years ago, during the Early Neolithic. It was a relatively fast process that affected both the interior and coastal zones, but it was also a heterogeneous pr...
Book
En esta obra los autores, profesores universitarios de reconocido prestigio académico e investigador, nos ofrecen una original visión de la prehistoria desde sus inicios hasta las primeras sociedades con escritura. El libro ha buscado incidir en los principales procesos que han llevado a la humanidad a ser lo que es, desde sus orígenes hasta la épo...
Article
Full-text available
Over the last years, the knowledge of the children’s diet is a topic of growing interest in dental anthropology. Our aim seeks to establish patterns of interpopulation and intrapopulation variability in dietary microwear among children from four Iberian sites dated to the Neolithic through Bronze Age. Buccal and occlusal surfaces are compared to as...
Article
Les sépultures à dalles néolithiques sont connues depuis le début du XXe siècle, tout particulièrement grâce au travail débuté par J. Vilaró et poursuivi par M. Cura, J. Castany et Ll. Guerrero. Cependant, elles ont reçu de la part des archéologues moins d’attention que d’autres structures funéraires (même si elles sont souvent mentionnées dans la...
Article
RESUMEN En este trabajo se presentan los primeros datos estrati-gráficos, radiocarbónicos y de cultura material de las re-cientes excavaciones en las Coves de Montserrat (Cova Gran y Cova Freda). Estos emblemáticos yacimientos fue-ron excavados el año 1922 y proporcionaron uno de los primeros conjuntos cardiales de la península ibérica. Desde enton...
Article
Dental microwear is a widely used technique to infer the diet of ancient populations. This method allows to determine not only the physical properties of the food, such as abrasiveness or hardness, but also informs about how food was processed before being consumed. This technique is applied, in both buccal and occlusal dental surfaces, by means of...
Article
Full-text available
The Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods are poorly understood in northeastern Iberia. Most of the information comes from the sepulchral structures rather than habitat settlements. The high number of individuals usually recovered from this types of collective burial spaces, together with the low number of direct radiocarbon dates available on th...
Article
Full-text available
El Abric del Xicotó y Les Auvelles son yacimientos inéditos situados en el extremo occidental de Cataluña (entre el Prepirineo y el llano). Los primeros datos disponibles indican para Xicotó un uso complejo del espacio (estructuras de combustión, agujeros de poste y fosas) durante una fase de cerámicas impresas no cardiales c. 5300-5000 cal BC, sig...
Article
Los programas de divulgación científica parecen preparados para todo tipo de público. Sin embargo, ciertos colectivos —p.e., personas con discapacidad física e intelectual, de la tercera edad, en riesgo de exclusión social, inmigrantes recién llegados— quedan habitualmente al margen de tales programas y no se piensa en ellos a la hora de diseñarlos...
Article
Full-text available
We assembled genome-wide data from 271 ancient Iberians, of whom 176 are from the largely unsampled period after 2000 BCE, thereby providing a high-resolution time transect of the Iberian Peninsula.We document high genetic substructure between northwestern and southeastern hunter-gatherers before the spread of farming.We reveal sporadic contacts be...
Article
In this article, a zooarchaeological and isotopic analysis is presented for 26 dog exemplars (Canis familiaris). These dogs were deposited in burial and ceremonial structures in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Neolithic, within the Pit Grave cultural horizon (ca. 4200–3600 cal BC). Four archaeological sites of the Catalonian co...
Chapter
Full-text available
Les dades radiocarbòniques i la seva anàlisi durant el Neolític a les Valls d'Andorra Monografies del MAC 2, Barcelona 2018, ISBN: 978-84-393-9811-0 (PÀG. 91-100) INTRODUCCIÓ Andorra, tot i les reduïdes dimensions del seu terri-tori, compta amb un conjunt de jaciments neolítics que han esdevingut transcendents per a l'estudi de diferents fases del...
Article
Full-text available
Aunque los programas de divulgación científica relacionados con la arqueología parecen preparados para todo tipo de públicos, la realidad es muy diferente. Los museos, los parques arqueológicos, las visitas a yacimientos, suelen tener un público “cautivo” o fiel como son los niños y jóvenes de escuelas e institutos, y las familias con ciertos recur...
Article
Full-text available
Entendemos que el reconocimiento de la función de los instrumentos líticos puede aproximarnos a las actividades que realizaban las primeras comunidades neolíticas que se asentaron en el noreste de la península ibérica. Uno de los contextos donde poder abordar tales cuestiones es el yacimiento al aire libre de Les Guixeres de Vilobí. Perteneciente a...
Article
Cova Bonica has yielded one of the few assemblages of Cardial Neolithic records of directly dated human remains (c. 5470 and 5220 years cal. BC – unmodelled) in the Iberian Peninsula and has provided the first complete genome of an Iberian farmer. A minimum of seven individuals and six age clusters have been ascribed on the basis of the disarticula...
Conference Paper
Sea-pathways: Neolithic on littoral environments F. Xavier Oms. SERP, Seminari d’Estudis i Recerques Prehistòriques. Secció de Prehistòria i Arqueologia, Universitat de Barcelona. oms@ub.edu Miriam Cubas. Sociedad de Ciencias Aranzadi-University of York. Zorroagagaina 11. 20014. Donostia-San Sebastián. Gipuzkoa-Spain. mcubas.morera@gmail.com Abst...
Poster
Full-text available
The spread of the agriculture to the Southwest of Europe is one of the most important phenomena in the history of the humankind. In this context the sea-pathways played an important role as vehicle of expansion of the new subsistence practices, technology and cultural knowledge. The Mediterranean is one of the regions where these aspects are partic...
Chapter
Full-text available
One of the elements that define the so-called "Pit Burials Horizon" is the presence within certain burials of a set of tools and ornaments which were made of exogenous materials or which their acquisition and processing required an enormous investment of effort. Chronologically, we stand at the end of the 5th and beginning of the 4th millennium cal...
Article
The stratigraphic, sedimentary and palaeoenvironmental features reflected in cavities in the Catalan Coastal Ranges of NE Iberia (Can Sadurní and Guineu caves) characterize the periods of pronounced climatic and human complexity that occurred c. 13.0–6.0 cal ka BP. This includes the stages of the Younger Dryas and Mid/Early Holocene, the latter bei...
Article
Camí de Can Grau is one of the most important Neolithic necropolises of the "Pit Burials" horizon (North-East of the Iberian Peninsula. Late fifth-early fourth millennia cal BC), because of its large number of graves. However, the number of buried individuals and the type of grave goods of the site have some peculiarities suggesting that could be o...
Book
En aquest treball, l’autor analitza l’estat de la qüestió del procés de neolitització del nord-est de la península Ibèrica. En un primer bloc es presenten les dades sobre les darreres comunitats caçadores-recol·lectores, i també el context de l’arribada del neolític a l’occident Mediterrani. En un segon bloc s’analitzen les característiques del pri...
Article
Full-text available
Radiocarbon and palaeodiet information has been obtained for two Neolithic necropolises in the north-east of the Iberian Peninsula: Puig d’en Roca and Can Gelats (Girona, Spain). Although Puig d’en Roca is one of the most important necropolises in this period, it is also one of the least known as, following its excavation in the 1950s and 1960s, it...
Article
The northeast of the Iberian Peninsula is a region that so far has contributed little information on the transition between the last hunter-gatherer groups and the first farming communities. Although data about the Late Mesolithic is still scanty, in recent years more information has been obtained about the Early Neolithic as a consequence of sever...
Article
Excavations at Cova Bonica (Barcelona, Spain) have revealed 98 human remains, grouped into five age clusters and corresponding to a minimum of six non-articulated individuals. The remains are clearly associated with Cardial pottery, lithic artifacts, and ornaments suggesting an Early Neolithic horizon. The radiocarbon dating of three human individu...
Article
Full-text available
En este trabajo se presentan los datos radiocarbónicos y de las cerámicas decoradas de numerosos yacimientos del NE Peninsular pertenecientes al Neolítico antiguo (c.5600-4900). Mediante el análisis de los dos registros, se han podido detectar características culturales independientes en diferentes territorios de esta región. Después de una primera...