Category: Outreach

From climate to conflict: recap of the GIAP Seminars of 2023

What an extraordinary year it has been for the GIAP Seminar series in 2023! As we bid farewell to this year’s series, let’s take a moment to reminisce about the incredible talks that we were able to enjoy. Although this chapter has concluded, the GIAP team is already hard at work, preparing another remarkable line-up…
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At the Barcelona Science Festival, we cultivate knowledge with Archaeobotany!

This weekend, Rambla Prim in Barcelona has been buzzing with families and researchers at the 16th Science Festival.  We participated in the event with a workshop on cereal cultivation and sustainable food, where children and their families interacted with large-scale reproductions of ancient cereal seeds  and performed tasks of sample identification and classification.  The activity was very well received, with the participation of about thirty people, including 15 children and their families. The workshop led to the discovery of Archaeobotany: a discipline that is not widely known in the popular imagination of Archaeology but is essential for understanding key aspects of past societies‘ daily life; such as food, agricultural practices, and trade routes. In the introductory phase of the workshop, we compared some of the most consumed cereals today with the wide variety of cereal species that existed in the prehistoric Mediterranean area. Using various graphic and plastic materials (a poster, reproductions of charred seeds, and images on paper), our researchers explained the most relevant aspects of their research methodology. Furthermore, the researchers explained the key aspects of the current research methodology in archaeobotany. They emphasized the collaboration with ancient seed banks (agrogenetics), our experimental cultivations in the Institute of Plant Breeding and Genetic…
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Cultivating Knowledge: Deciphering the Seeds of the Past to Plant the Future

(Català a continuació) Would you like to be an archaeobotanist for a day? Join us this Sunday afternoon at the “Festa de la Ciència 2023” in Barcelona! Cultivating Knowledge: Deciphering the Seeds of the Past to Plant the FutureDid you know that from something as small as a seed, we can learn what our ancestors…
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