Muge Mesolithic Shellmiddens
| PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR | Célia Gonçalves |
| CO-PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS | Nuno Bicho João Cascalheira Lino André |
| FUNDING INSTITUTION | Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia Câmara Municipal de Salvaterra de Magos Casa Cadaval Earthwatch Institute |
| REFERENCE | |
| DURATION | 2008-present |
Portugal
Project Description.
The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition remains one of the most controversial issues in prehistory archaeology, marking the end of the last hunter-gatherers and the appearance of the first food producing societies in Western Europe. The case of Central Portugal, and more specifically of the Tagus valley, with the Muge shellmiddens complex, is currently one of the most important regions to study this transitional phase and certainly help move debate forward. On the one hand, because there is an overlap of a few hundred years in the region between the Muge Mesolithic and the exogenous early Neolithic populations, and on the other, because recent work carried out in the Mesolithic shellmiddens of Muge revealed preliminary evidence of cultural and genetic interaction between both populations. This last point contradicts the prevailing traditional perspectives on a full human population replacement during the transition.
This project will develop and expand our knowledge of the transition of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers to Neolithic farmers in central Portugal, and to increase our understanding of the complex changes not only in technology and subsistence, but also in how people thought about themselves and their worlds, the nature of their interactions and the related social processes. The project aims to continue excavations in order to get new data on the absolute chronology, isotopic and DNA, material culture, paleoenvironment, and human burial contexts and patterns that will allow us to test the hypothesis of a cultural and genetic integration process between the Mesolithic and Neolithic communities in the Muge region.