Household storage, surplus and supra-household storage in prehistoric and protohistoric societies of the Western Mediterranean

Georgina Prats; Ferran Antolín; Natàlia Alonso

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0238237

Household storage, surplus and supra-household storage in prehistoric and protohistoric societies of the Western Mediterranean

PLoS One. 2020 Sep 14;15(9):e0238237. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0238237. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Georgina Prats^{1

2}, Ferran Antolín¹, Natàlia Alonso^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Integrative Prehistory and Archaeological Science (IPNA/IPAS), Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
² Departament d'Història, Facultat de Lletres, Universitat de Lleida, Lleida, Catalonia, Spain.
³ Departament d'Història, Facultat de Lletres, INDEST, Universitat de Lleida, Lleida, Catalonia, Spain.

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to assess foodstuff storage throughout Recent Prehistory (5600-50 BCE) from the standpoint of the three different types (household, surplus and supra-household) identified in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula. The volumetric data of the underground silos serves as a proxy to evaluate the link between them and the agricultural systems and technological changes. The study also assesses the ability, and specifically, the will of the ancient communities of the northeastern Iberia to generate domestic and extra-domestic surpluses.

Publication types

Historical Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Agriculture / methods*
Agriculture / statistics & numerical data
Family Characteristics / history*
Food Storage / history*
Food Storage / methods*
Food Storage / standards
History, Ancient
History, Medieval
Humans
Mediterranean Region

Grants and funding

This research has been funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (http://www.snf.ch/) as part of a SNF Professorship (PI: F. Antolín), grant number: PP00P1_170515, and by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and University projects HAR2008-0526 and HAR2016-78277-R. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.