Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow Dr Jessie Feito (‘FoodMod-RGB: Modelling food plant trade in the Roman provinces of Gaul and Britannia’ [HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01]) recently returned from working in the University of Barcelona, Department of Biology isotope lab with Professor Jose Luis Aarus Ortega, Maria Dolors Serret Molins, and Joel Segarra Torruella. She spent a few weeks processing samples from the Roman site…
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This June-July Dr Alexandra Livarda visited the archaeological site of Akrotiri at Santorini, Greece, to start a new research collaboration with Dr Anaya Sarpaki, the head archaeobotanist of this important site. Akrotiri was a Bronze Age town, buried under the ashes of the volcanic eruption that led to the destruction of this busy and prosperous…
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Our MSCA post-doctoral fellow, Dr Jessie Feito, went for another year to Pompeii with the Casa della Regina Carolina Excavations (University of Bologna, Cornell University, Harvard University). Jessie does the archaeobotany for the project, using archaeobotanical macroremains (e.g., seeds, fruits) to explore plant use within the house and plant-human interactions in one of the largest…
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Charlotte Diffey, our Beatriu de Pinós fellow and member of ICAC’s archaeobotany team, had a really busy month travelling at the east of the Mediterranean! Charlotte started with a visit in Istanbul where she co-ran the Environmental Archaeology Workshop at ANAMED on the 16th – 17th of May funded by Koҫ University. Several graduate students from Koҫ…
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We have just published a new paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science presenting a high-performance approach to 3D morphometrics through deep learning and tabular foundation models. The study uses barley grains as a demanding case study, but its implications extend well beyond archaeobotany: it shows how the full three-dimensional shape of small archaeological and biological objects…
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RADICI conference – June 3-4 (online) RADICI is an online conference dedicated to archaeobotany in Italy, conceived as an opportunity for exchange and discussion among scholars working in this field of research.The programme brings together contributions addressing some of the discipline’s main thematic areas: the reconstruction of past environments, through the study of botanical evidence…
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Dr Alexandra Livarda visited the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences at Sofia between the 12th and 15th of May after an invitation by the Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research and the National Archaeological Institute & Museum. She was warmly received by Dr Kaloyan Pramatarov, Dr Nataliya Ivanova and Dr Mila Andonova who have been excellent hosts throughout.…
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We are pleased to announce the first presentation in our 2025-2026 seminar series. We are especially delighted to welcome Professor John (Mac) Marston, Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology at Boston University.The presentation will take place on Wednesday, February 25, at 3 p.m. (CET) and will be online. Access the webinar here – there is no need…
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Two recently published papers shed new light on the agricultural practices, foodways, and plant management strategies of Roman Iesso, one of the few sites in the Iberian Peninsula with exceptional, waterlogged, preservation of plant remains, opening up new windows into Roman economy and tastes. The first paper, published in Environmental Archaeology by Theoni Baniou, Núria Romaní Sala, Patricia…
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On the 3rd of December, PhD candidate Theoni Baniou had her final examination of her PhD thesis. Supervised by Dr Alexandra Livarda (GIAP/ICAC) and Dr Núria Romaní Sala (UAB), her work entitled: ‘Exploring Roman tastes: An interdisciplinary approach, using archaeobotany, organic residue analysis and GMM to reconstruct dietary habits in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula’…
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