This July the BSA’s ‘Supplementary Volumes’ series published a new volume by Carl Knappett, Alexandra Livarda and Nicoletta Momigliano that brought together the results of their PALAP Palaikastro landscape and excavation project in the east of Crete. The book presents the results of excavations at the settlement, landscape survey and palaeoenvironmental analysis, revealing long-term agropastoral subsistence strategies…
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Dr Theoni Baniou, currently conducting postdoctoral research at the Institut Català d’Arqueologia Clàssica (ICAC-CERCA), has made great advances on the application of Organic Residue Analysis (ORA) to investigate foodways and plant exploitation in the Late Antique site of València la Vella (Riba-roja de Túria). Dr Baniou in collaboration with the archaeologists of the site has…
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Marina Daniel has recently returned from an extended research stay on the island of Lesvos as part of her newly launched doctoral project at ICAC-URV, that started in May under the supervision of Dr Alexandra Livarda and Professor Joaquín Ruiz de Arbulo Bayona. Her PhD investigates the agricultural economies of the prehistoric Aegean through archaeobotanical…
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From July 3 to 10, Dr. Lídia Colominas was in southern Tuscany (Italy) collaborating on the Marzuolo Archeological Project (MAP). There, Dr. Colominas analysed the faunal remains of Podere Marzuolo site (ca. 2 ha), a rural craft centre that was occupied between the 1st century BC and the 3rd century AD. The project directors, Astrid…
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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 are pleased to announce that the book “Roman Rural Archaeology: Society, Economy and Culture” has been published, both the digital and the hardback version (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/roman-rural-archaeology/46E7F36223477BE6C5611883E35AC40F#fndtn-contents). Dr Lídia Colominas has participated in this collaborative book with the writing of chapter 16 entitled “Roman Livestock Husbandry: The Importance of the Countryside”. This chapter explains the place…
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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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We are pleased to announce that Dr Lídia Colominas has been awarded the grant “Ayudas para Incentivar la Consolidación Investigadora. 2025 (CNS2025-165247)”. With this two-years grant, she will develop the project “PASTORA: Alimentando a los domésticos y a los salvajes: estudio de los sistemas de alimentación de los animales en la Iberia romana a través…
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