Ferran Antolín
I am interested in early farming societies and the household scale of decision-making in daily economic aspects, the concept of risk, and how different strategies were adopted in the past to overcome difficulties. As an archaeobotanist, I study these issues through the analysis of seed and fruit remains, basically answering the questions: why are they here and what do they mean? I always go from strong on-site integrative studies to the general overviews. Reading is the only thing that takes my mind off of work.

… But let me introduce you to the AgriChange team!

Simone Häberle
Simone has been working at the IPNA since she finished her Doctorate in Archaeological Science, with a speciality in Archaeozoology. She studies fish and small animal remains and she is interested in the study of their economic role as principal or secondary resources, fishery and hunting techniques, pests, etc. For the AgriChange project, she is focusing on pests and climatic indicators. She always works in multidisciplinary projects and enjoys the exchange of ideas with other specialists. She is personally compromised to contribute to a zero-waste world.

Ana Jesus
After graduating in Porto and obtaining a Master in Leiden University, Ana arrived in Basel to continue her training in archaeobotany. She likes observing plant remains and tries to obtain from them the maximum information possible through accurate description. That is why she also likes biometric approaches and is now working on Geometric Morphometrics applied to plant remains. She is also in charge of compiling a large archaeobotanical database of the study region. She enjoys experimentation and she is always ready for new fieldwork destinations. She is also an environmental activist.

Héctor Martínez Grau
Archaeology is Hector’s life. He enjoys fieldwork and labwork equally. He is always willing to learn and use new technologies applied to Archaeology but he always has material culture in mind to make social inferences. He is interested in late hunter-gatherer populations and early farmers and his greatest expertise is in the NE of the Iberian Peninsula. He is in charge of generating a database with all radiocarbon and dendro dates from the study area of AgriChange, as well as dating ca. 400 samples of grains and do carbon stable isotope analysis of the same material.

Georgina Prats
Georgina studies social dynamics in the past through the study of storage. She is interested in past agriculture, but particularly in productivity, surplus and food security issues. She enjoys combining multiple analytical methods (like GIS) to analyse her data and present it in the most sound way possible. She has also done ethnographic research in Tunis and compiled ethnographic data on grinding technologies for the ERC funded PlantCult Project (University of Thessaloniki). Within the AgriChange project, she will be analysing storage methods and storage capacity for the study region in order to better understand risk-management and productivity in the Neolithic period. She is as much a life lover as an engaged literature reader.

Marguerita Schäfer
Marguerita is a biologist with a large experience in archaeozoological analyses, with a particular expertise in the Neolithic period of central Europe. She is passionate about research and has developed an expertise for the study of large animal bones and insect remains. She is now focusing on palaeoclimatic indicators and different crop pests within the AgriChange Project. She is also an environmentalist and nature protector.

Bigna Steiner
Bigna did her studies in Botany and fell in love with Archaeobotany when she first heard a talk by Prof. Stefanie Jacomet. After finishing her PhD at the IPNA she did a Postdoctoral stay in Montpellier and then returned to Basel. She is developing her own line of research on the investigation of water and wetland plants in archaeological deposits as proxies for water-level changes in the past. She will provide her expertise knowledge to study potential changes in palaeocological conditions in wetland sites within the project scope, as well as contribute to the generation of archaeobotanical results. She is a passionate reader and loves the Swiss Alps.

Raül Soteras
Raül is a photographer. He has the main task of doing all the photographic and video documentation of the project, of taking all the pictures for geometric morphometric analysis and for the documentation of seeds that are sent to radiocarbon dating and stable isotope analysis. He is also an accurate lab technician and has processed all the samples sieved at the IPNA during the project duration. He enjoys travelling, particularly when he can buy beers to increase his personal collection!