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

Project description

How early farmers adapted to new lands

Thousands of years ago, early farmers reached the Atlantic shores of Europe, stepping into unfamiliar landscapes with no clear roadmap. How did they choose what to eat? Did they all adapt in the same way? Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the W2FARM project will show that early farming was not a single story. In fact, it was a patchwork of individual and collective choices. Using archaeobotany, chemical analysis, ecology, and food systems research, W2FARM explores how Neolithic communities between the 5th and 3rd millennia BCE managed crops, wild foods, and daily meals. The project sheds light on the origins of food systems and offers lessons for today’s biodiversity and food security challenges.

Objective

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.

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HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01

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Coordinator

ASSOCIACAO BIOPOLIS
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 191 343,12
Address
CAMPUS DE VAIRAO DA UNIVERSIDADE DO PORTO, RUA PADRE ARMANDO QUINTAS nº7
4485-661 Crasto
Portugal

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Region
Continente Norte Área Metropolitana do Porto
Activity type
Research Organisations
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Total cost

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Partners (3)

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