News

The Centre for the Study of Prehistoric Archaeological Heritage of the Department of Prehistory (CEPAP-UAB) will highlight the archaeological heritage of the Tabac Cave (Camarasa) site through a new interactive exhibition that connects heritage, technology and society. The exhibition “Traces of a New World: The First Neolithic People of the Tabac Cave” will be carried out with the support of a social impact grant from the Government of Catalonia (IMPACTE), which promotes equality, sustainability and open science as cross-cutting themes.

An innovative study published in Science which included the involvement of UAB archaeologists reveals that the remarkable diversity characterising dogs today began some 11,000 years ago. The study thus questions traditional hypotheses that point to this diversity being largely the result of the selective breeding done by Victorian kennel clubs.

The production of El Argar pottery was organized in specialised workshops located next to specific clay deposits, far from the main centres of power, according to a new study lead by UAB researchers and published in in the Journal of Archaeological Science. This production model reinforces the existence of a complex, hierarchical, supra-local organisation in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula during the Bronze Age.

The Centre for the Study of Prehistoric Archaeological Heritage (CEPAP) of the UAB Department of Prehistory has obtained two grants from the Catalan Ministry for Research and Universities to promote the development and transfer of its SUGAR software (Software for Unified Governance of Archaeological Research). The projects, awarded in this year's call for proposals for the Knowledge Industry (IdC) programme, were the only ones in the humanities' field to be funded in the Product and Innovators categories.

The UAB celebrated the 10th anniversary of its Archaeology and Palaeontology Campus with a conference on the history and future challenges of this network, made up of archaeological sites, municipal facilities, museums and archaeological parks in which the University carries out part of its teaching and research in both disciplines. The campus is a strategic project of the UAB that represents an essential improvement in the training of archaeologists and palaeontologists in Catalonia, with the introduction of compulsory practices in archaeology and paleontology as a distinctive feature.

An international study with the involvement of the UAB, published in Nature Scientific Reports, reveals new findings based on the teeth found at five archaeological sites in Syria. These findings give new insights into how the world’s first farming villagers formed communities, moved across the land, and responded to outsiders. The research reconstructs mobility patterns that had never been observed before.

Archaeologist Roberto Risch, professor in the Department of Prehistory, and science historian Marco Armiero, ICREA researcher at the Institut d’Història de la Ciència (IHC), receive an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) in the 2024 call for proposals.

A study with the involvement of the UAB, IPHES-CERCA and URV, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, provides for the first time direct fossil evidence of frugivory in South American mastodons and shows the lasting ecological impact of their extinction.

On Friday 6 June the UAB will play host to the closing event of the project Investiga.edu, an educational proposal which for four years made it possible to bring science and research into archaeology, palaeontology and geology closer to primary and secondary schools located in rural and mountaineous areas, particularly in the Pyrenees and pre-Pyrenees regions. The event will take place from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the Periodicals Room of the Humanities Library.

National Geographic magazine has dedicated the main article of its May issue to the research and discoveries made by the research team of the Social Archaeology of the Mediterranean (ASOME) group at the UAB at the sites of La Almoloya and La Bastida, which are representative of the El Argar society that inhabited the southeastern Iberian Peninsula 4,000 years ago. The publication has also devoted its editorial and cover to the topic, featuring an illustration of the Princess of La Almoloya.