From wild to farm: disentangling the plant food systems of the first farmers in Atlantic Europe

ongoing

Imagine you are a farmer who arrives in a land in the far west of Europe and encounters unfamiliar plants and people. How would you react? Would everyone adapt in a similar way? These are the kinds of decisions that the first farmers made when they arrived on the Atlantic coast during the Neolithic period. The life of the first farmers is more than a single and linear story, it is a mosaic of different narratives, both individual and collective, that need to be addressed. Despite the significant contributions of many scholars to our understanding of Neolithic communities in Western Europe, both in terms of their material and immaterial manifestations, there remains considerable uncertainty about the impact of the complex human-environment relationships associated with the adaptation of sedentary life on the Atlantic shores. Using a convergent and multidisciplinary research approach involving archaeobotany, chemical analysis, functional ecology and food systems, this project aims to examine the adaptation of the Atlantic region to the first agricultural communities from the 5th to 3rd millennium BC. By analysing the whole process of crop selection and wild food management, from the initial stages to the final preparation of food, the project offers insights into the rationale behind these choices. Studying the early farmers is not only a matter of historical interest; it also provides a basis for understanding the evolution of food systems and the factors that shaped them, giving us invaluable lessons for the present and emerging future of biodiversity and food security.