niccomazzucco
Sep 13, 20221 min read
140
top of page
News
News
to About
Discover the Project
The QUANT project is designed to study the spread of the Neolithic in the Central and Western Mediterranean through an innovative and multidisciplinary approach to the stone tools used for plant harvesting and processing tasks.
Human migrations have been shaping our world since prehistoric times. Groups that move from one location to a new one face changing conditions that might represent opportunities as well as constraints for adaptation.
Neolithic colonists from the Eastern Mediterranean introduced a broad range of new plants into the European territories. Crafts and food were made from a diversity of plant species, through a diversity of techniques
The study of the techniques used for plant harvesting and processing could be useful to reconstruct the pathways of Neolithic migrations
The analysis of Use-Wear traces can provide insight into Neolithic plant economy. The different ways in which a plant is worked affect the traces formation process, leaving visually different use-wear marks on the used tools
The aim of the QUANT project is to highlight different traditions in plant-working techniques, and to determine how these were disseminated across the Mediterranean during the Neolithic expansion
Foundings
Funded by
Hosting Institutions
Methods
Methods
People
USE-WEAR
ANALYSIS
Surface metrology is the measurement of small-scale features on surfaces. In this project, Confocal Scanning Microscopy (CSM) is used in order to obtain quantitative information on the use-wear patterns.
MATHEMATICAL
MODELLING
Use-wear analysis is discipline that has roots in the work of the archaeologist S. A. Semenov, in the late 1960s. It is a method to identify the functions of ancient tools by examining the wear patterns of their working surfaces and edges.
SURFACE
METROLOGY
Fast Marching and Cost Distance methods are employed to reconstruct routes of population dispersal, calculating the shortest-path distance from the source of dispersal given a series of geographical and demographic constraints.
People
Niccolò Mazzucco (Project coordinator). I am currently a Marie Sklodowska Curie-IF Fellow at the Archaeology of Social Dynamics (ASD) research group of the Milá y Fontanals Institution (IMF, Barcelona) of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).
I am an archaeologist specialized in the study of the flaked stone assemblages and, in particular, of the use-wear traces. My research interests are mainly focused on the Mesolithic and Neolithic societies of the Mediterranean area and on their economic and technological organisation.
Juan José Ibáñez (Project Supervisor). I am research scientist at the Archaeology of Social Dynamics (ASD) research group of the Milá y Fontanals Institution (IMF, Barcelona) of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).
I am currently working on two key thematic areas: the analysis of prehistoric instruments’ role and the Neolithic’s origins and dissemination in the Middle East through Europe. I work on environmental evolution, origins of agriculture and livestock, obsidian exchanges through modelling, early houses and settlements, funerary rituals and the symbolic world.
James Steele (Secondment Supervisor - UCL). My research focuses on the evolution of speech, and on large-scale human population dispersals. I am currently working on experimental approaches to cultural transmission, and am collaborating on models of population dispersal and innovation diffusion in several case studies.
Fabio Silvia (External advisor - Bournemouth University). My main research interest is in how humans perceive their environment and use that knowledge to time and adjust their cosmological, religious, social and economic behaviours. This steered me, at the regional scale, to skyscape and landscape archaeology and, at larger space and time scales, to the study of culture-dependent dispersal dynamics and their modelling.
Juan Francisco Gibaja (Project advisor - IMF-CSIC). I am scientific researcher of the Superior Council of Scientific Investigations in the Milá y Fontanals Institution (Barcelona). I am a specialist in the functional analysis of stone tools, in recent years my research has been focused on the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the Western Mediterranean. Finally, it should be noted that since 2013 I have been directing several scientific projects with the aim of bringing science, in general, and archaeology, in particular, to the public.
Ignacio Clemente Conte (Project advisor - IMF-CSIC). Since 2004, I am a Titular Scientist at the Milá y Fontanals Institution (CSIC), where I focus my research on the study of use-wear traces in lithic, bone and shell prehistoric artifacts. I am currently directing research projects related to the human occupation of high mountain areas in the Pyrenees.
Bernard Gassin (Project advisor - TRACES UMR 5608). Associated researcher at the CNRS - UMR 5608 TRACES, I am a specialist of the flaked stone assemblages of the Mesolithic and Neolithic of the Mediterranean area. I am particularly interested in Traceology and in Experimental Archaeology and I have been leading research on Neolithic economic organization, trading networks and raw-material procurement and managment.
See also: www.asd-csic.es/research/ongoing-projects/quant/
Contact
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas – CSIC
Institució Milà i Fontanals – IMF
Archaeology of Social Dynamics research group (ASD)
C/ Egipcíaques, 15. 08001 BARCELONA
Tel. 934426576
bottom of page