The domestication of plants and animals marks a major turning point in human history, and the development of agricultural societies is closely intertwined with the evolution of their domestic species. The DEMETER project set out to understand how domestic plants and animals transformed—outside a core domestication centre, over the past 8,000 years, and to identify the socio-economic and environmental factors that shaped their diversity and evolution. DEMETER is resolutely interdisciplinary, combining concepts and approaches from zooarchaeology, archaeobotany, archaeology, evolutionary biology, palaeoclimatology, and data science.
Over the course of the project, data from more than 600 archaeological sites across the northwestern Mediterranean (Catalonia and southern France) were examined, and the largest morphometric dataset ever compiled for the region was assembled. A total of 19,879 barley grains and animal teeth were analysed through geometric morphometrics. These datasets were supported by newly developed reference collections comprising 6,397 modern and experimentally charred barley grains, 1,303 modern mammal teeth, and 12,615 archaeological specimens. This approach enabled reliable distinction between archaeological sheep and goat teeth using combined GMM and palaeoproteomic (ZooMS) analyses, and the identification of sub-species and morphotypes based on barley grain morphology, even when charred (the most common mode of preservation for archaeobotanical remains in the region).
In addition, a large-scale study was conducted on body-size evolution in a series of domestic (pig, sheep, goat, cattle, chicken) and wild (hare, rabbit, fox, deer) species in southern France. Based on 81,211 bone measurements, this analysis produced long-term trajectories of body-size change, revealing synchronous shifts across all species, both wild and domestic. For most of the past 7,000 years, wild and domestic taxa followed parallel body-size trends driven by shared environmental pressures. In the last millennium, however, their trajectories diverged: domestic animals grew larger, most likely under intensified human selection, whereas wild species became smaller, likely due to increased hunting pressure and habitat fragmentation.
DEMETER has therefore produced syntheses that fundamentally transform our understanding of the biocultural history of domestic species in the northwestern Mediterranean basin. Whether these results can be generalised to other geographic areas, characterised by different environments, palaeoclimatic histories, and socio-cultural contexts, remains to be explored. Nonetheless, the findings obtained in this ecologically and culturally coherent region provide a strong foundation for future comparative research aimed at deepening our understanding of the human past.
