The work done and the obtained results until the end of the project are beyond the state of the art in three different areas:
First, at the micro-regional scale, the excavation results at the Arenal de la Virgen site and the integrated geoarchaeological, chronological and paleoecological program represent one of the very few case studies with multi-proxy evidence of severe impacts of the 8.2 kya cold climatic event on human systems. Particularly, the work performed conciliates human occupation and paleoecological records at a local scale, in one of the most arid areas of Southwestern Europe during the Early Holocene, providing a secure framework to analyse regional population dynamics. In addition, it must be stressed the focus on open-air sites, usually underrepresented in the archaeological record and long- term research programs of southern Europe. Other significant results are the multiproxy geoarchaeological study of Mesolithic hearthpits and the application of intra-site spatial analyses in the Arenal de la Virgen site.
Second, this project has reported the first reconstruction of long- term changes in population size during the Last Glacial-Early Holocene transition in Iberia through the statistical analysis of the radiocarbon record. We have uncovered evidence of relative population changes and developed a best-fitting demographic model composed by three different phases. Our findings suggest that the population of Iberia increased during most of GI-1 until a rapid decrease occurred at the onset of the YD stadial, subject to certain variability at regional and sub-regional scales, which was followed by a sustained period of stationary growth. During the second half of the Early Holocene (c. 10.2-8 kya), we identified a recovery of relative population levels, when growth rates were similar or slightly greater than those of the first phase, but this soon attenuated towards a pattern of fluctuation around stationary growth. Importantly, this pattern of population dynamics agrees with recent aDNA studies, suggesting that a major population turnover occurred in Europe at the end of the Late Glacial, but we can now also suggest that the timing of this process can be pushed slightly forward to encompass the Younger Dryas and the Early Holocene of the Iberian Peninsula and the rapid environmental changes that occurred. Our modelling results illustrate that human populations have an inherent capacity for rapid growth, but it seems that in the past this was often checked by the constraints of the environment, especially for prehistoric hunter-gatherers during episodes of climate change.
Finally, the Paleodem project has brought Social Network Analysis in Archaeology to the centre of the research agenda in cultural evolution. The introduction of a new cross-disciplinary framework ‘network thinking in cultural evolution’ as a research field has allowed us to integrate different perspectives from Evolutionary Anthropology, Psychology and Archaeology into a common conceptual basis. From here, the two case studies analysed during the project (the comparison between Early and Late Mesolithic social networks, and the study of network mediated cultural diffusion of technological innovations) have produced relevant results and open new research venues for the application of social network analyses to the stone age prehistory.
Certainly, this kind of hypothesis-driven approach has the potential of moving the study cultural transmission processes in hunter-gatherers well beyond the state of the art.
