The Demeter project: eight millennia of agrobiodiversity changes in the northwest Mediterranean basin

Allowen Evin (1) , Laurent Bouby (1) , Jérôme Ros (1) , Sarah Ivorra (1) , María Saña (2) , Marine Jeanjean (1) , Angèle Jeanty (1) , Camille Dham (1) , Margaux Tillier (1) , Julien Azuara (1) , Vianney Forest (3, 4) , Ferran Antolin (5, 6) , Odile Peyron (1) , María Saña , Joaquim Ripoll (2) , Vincent Bonhomme (1) , Silvia Valenzuela-Lamas (7) , Isabel Figueiral (3) , Lionel Gourichon (8) , Laure Paradis (1) , Jean-Frédéric Terral (1)

1 UMR ISEM - Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier
2 SAPPO - Departament de Prehistòria de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
3 Inrap - Institut national de recherches archéologiques préventives
4 TRACES - Travaux et recherches archéologiques sur les cultures, les espaces et les sociétés
5 Unibas - Université de Bâle = University of Basel = Basel Universität
6 Department of Natural Sciences, German Archaeological Institute
7 Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientıficas (IMF-CSIC)
8 CEPAM - Centre d'Études Préhistoire, Antiquité, Moyen-Age

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, sheep, goats, and barley) in relation with environmental and socioeconomic factors in the northwes- tern Mediterranean basin since the beginnings of agriculture. The project is based on a combination of approaches including phe- nomics (through geometric morphometrics), databasing, zooar- chaeology, archaeobotany, climate modeling, paleoproteins (ZooMs) and statistical analyses. Several hundreds of archaeo- logical sites from the South of France and Catalonia will be stu- died, covering the maximum environmental, societal and cultural diversity of context over the course of the last eight millennia.

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société

Allowen Evin, Laurent Bouby, Jérôme Ros, Sarah Ivorra, María Saña, et al.. The Demeter project: eight millennia of agrobiodiversity changes in the northwest Mediterranean basin. Elisa Nicoud; Marie Balasse; Emmanuel Desclaux; Isabelle Théry-Parisot. Biodiversités, environnements et sociétés depuis la Préhistoire : nouveaux marqueurs et approches intégrées : Actes des 41èmes Rencontres Internationales d’Archéologie et d’Histoire – Nice Côte d’Azur, Éditions APDCA, pp.77-86, 2021, 2-904110-64-X. ⟨hal-03451253⟩