Mediterranean coastal resources: benefits and constraints for prehistoric hunters-gatherers
The Project “Mediterranean Coastal Resources: benefits and constraints for Prehistoric hunters-gatherers” aims to investigate how Mediterranean coastal ecosystems and climatic changes over the last 19,000 years have affected settlement and subsistence patterns during the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. Studying past human adaptation in coastal zones is a key research topic to understand processes of economic intensification and human resilience to environmental change.

We propose to reconstruct the evolution of coastal landscapes around a well-known Mesolithic settlement area through the multi-proxy analysis of sediment cores of Pego lagoon (Gulf of Valencia, Spain). The objectives are: (a) the reconstruction of environmental changes through geomorphological, sedimentological and geochemical analysis and fossils of aquatic fauna in a well-constrain chronology, (b) the identification of vegetation cover changes through the analysis of pollen, spore and charcoal, which are linked to climatic change and human land-use,  (c) the reconstruction of the frequency of storm surge marine events using sedimentological analysis, and (d) the evaluation of ecosystems services and vulnerability to human pressures through a comparison of the inferred palaeoenvironmental dynamics with archaeological datasets from the same study area.

The hosting laboratory IPHES (University Rovira i Virgili, Spain) is the ideal institutional environment to develop the proposed research during the course of the fellowship and beyond. The researcher will be integrated within, and trained, in a strong collaborative and multidisciplinary network. This fellowship will reinforce the research experience, transferrable skills and audience and outreach of the candidate, and will thus be crucial for her future career.