Welcome to the "Coastal Shell Middens and Agricultural Origins in Atlantic Europe" research project website, here at the University of York!
The role of the rich coastal and marine biotopes of Atlantic Europe in sustaining relatively dense Mesolithic populations and thereby facilitating, delaying, or otherwise moderating the introduction of prehistoric farming into Atlantic Europe has been the focus of a long-standing and unresolved debate. Opinions are strongly divided both about the degree of discontinuity across the transition and the processes involved - cultural, demographic, social or environmental. Recent stable isotope work (d13C and d15N) on human bone has re-opened the debate by emphasising the contrast between marine-based diets in the late Mesolithic and terrestrial-based Neolithic ones, results which seem to be in conflict with other sources of palaeoeconomic data.Our aims in this project are to develop methods of analysing shell middens and marine molluscs, to provide new palaeoenvironmental and dietary information, to throw new light on the wider role of marine resources throughout prehistory, and to test competing theories of long-term socio-economic change. Work will focus on the analysis of the marine molluscs, an abundant but under-utilised source of data on palaeoeconomy and palaeoenvironment, drawing on a wide range of molluscan taxa and on material from Ireland, Scotland, England, Portugal, Spain, Brittany and Denmark.
