Cynthianne Spiteri

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Agriculture is thought to have originated in the Near East, and subsequently spread rapidly into Europe and the Mediterranean. However, although this transition has been intensely investigated and debated, the dynamics of how it took place are still very much unknown. Alongside archaeological data, scientific analyses have more recently made significant contributions to our knowledge of this period, so much so that recent work is challenging the concept of the “Neolithic Revolution” as a single rapid spread of agriculture, and more nuanced models for the spread of domestication in the Mediterranean are now being proposed. Dietary studies are particularly significant in trying to improve our understanding of the spread of agriculture since they provide direct evidence of changes in food consumption (and inter alia, food production). This project addresses the transition to agriculture in the Western Mediterranean basin using Organic Residue Analysis, a technique used to determine the contents of ceramic vessels by analysing their lipid content, and which has not yet been applied in this context.   

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MSc in Scientific Methods in Archaeology (Bradford)

BA (Hons.) Archaeology (Malta)