The project focused on addressing how different bias affecting the archaeological can condition the hypothesis building framework of the discipline and, hence, our knowledge of the past. By focusing on the spread of farming throughout the Western Mediterranean, the project has tried to assess how the fragmentary characteristics of the archaeological record, the research biases when gathering information and/or the frequent gaps in specific areas and chronology might hinder the way we understand the path that has led us to the present. To do so, it has relied on intensive computational simulation and statistic modelling, thus positioning itself at the vanguard of current methodological approaches in archaeological inference.
This can transfer to society in several ways. First, it constitutes a meta-scientific project which not archaeology, but every discipline where biases and problems on the data are important, can benefit from. This virtually includes several research disciplines studying the past (e.g. Paleontology) but also current disciplines where the recovery of data is an additional challenge. Additionally, and by properly assessing how these data are affecting our current knowledge of the past, the project has been able to refine certain theoretical aspects affecting the life and interactions of the last-hunter gatherers and the first farmers of the Western Mediterranean, while also extending its methods and inferential background to other global areas (e. g. Scandinavia or Japan).
The overall objectives of the project were, first, determining the most relevant biases affecting archaeological research. The project has been successful in this regard by developing large amount of computational simulation, and the consequences of the different biases considered, modelling from the moment in which the record is produced to how this is lost and how archaeologists condition our potential hypothesis building through their different methodological approaches. Second, the project was interested in understanding how tactical simulation could help us in this regard. The extensive deployment of this technique has allowed the project not only to obtain a better informed knowledge of how different parameters interact and condition our theoretical framework, but it has also given place to some enhanced methodological solutions that can be exported to different scientific fields.
Finally, the project has been able to reassess and challenge (as will be shown in upcoming publications) some currently standing theories, regarding the spread of farming, that were relying on under-assessed data. By focusing on the process that define the archaeological data and the methods that we used to extract the most information out of it, the project has been able to bring further archaeological hypothesis building as well as developed bespoke methodologies that can be exported and used in different research problems.
