‘The digital Neolithic: towards a global understanding of the worldwide adoption of agriculture (Neodigit)’

Joaquín Pérez Losada and Neus Isern Sardó, University of Girona; and Víctor López de Rioja, University of Barcelona.

This interdisciplinary project aims to enlarge our understanding of the transition to the Neolithic, one of the great socioeconomic changes in human history, occurring in every continent, which marked the global transformation of culture, technology and social organization.

Applying digital modeling techniques and geostatistical analysis to archeological data, we will attempt to settle controversies and check hypotheses arising from traditional archeological studies.

We will look at the Iberian Peninsula, but also Europe and other world regions: one of the linchpins of the study will be to identify processes of population (demic) and cultural expansion beyond Europe, and thus obtain a more global picture of the spread of agriculture worldwide, and the conditions that favored one or other transmission route. The method employed will be the application of geostatistical analysis techniques to newly created databases.

The project will also pursue a better understanding of Neolithic expansion in Europe through the development of two digital models, the first designed to simulate expansion in the Western Mediterranean (with a view to validating the theory of pioneer colonization) and the second to reproduce genetic clines (and link them with demic or cultural expansion processes). In doing so, we will collaborate with reputed archeologists, geneticists and linguists with expertise in the transition to the Neolithic.