THE PARTICIPATING PROJECTS

These are the 18 projects aspiring to the Award. Of these, the 6 finalists will be submitted to the evaluation of an international jury with recognized prestige in the scientific and cultural field that will choose the winning project.

Origin and cultural evolution of Homo erectus in East Africa

Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania

The disappearance of the earliest human culture, the Oldowan, and its substitution by a new technology, the Acheulean, is one of the main topics in modern Palaeolithic Archaeology. Recent research has established that the Acheulean emerged originally in East Africa around 1.7-1.6 million years ago, and from that area expanded across the rest of Africa, Europe and parts of Asia. However, despite the great relevance of the Oldowan- Acheulean transition, little is known about the biological and cultural evolutionary mechanisms underlying this process. Traditionally, it has been assumed that this major cultural change was ignited by the emergence of a new human species, Homo ergaster/ erectus, and that there was a steady technological evolution during the Oldowan that eventually led to the emergence of the Acheulean handaxes. However, these assumptions are not grounded in the current available evidence, but rooted in cultural-history paradigms that should now be superseded

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Underwater archaeological project Ebro Sea. Underwater archaeological survey and documentation of the wrecks of the First and Second World War in the Ebro Sea

Ebro Delta, Tarragona. Spain

The Ebro Sea Underwater Archaeological Project is the most important contemporary underwater archeology project in the history of Spain. More than 20 years of research focused on this specific project of cataloging and prospecting for submerged merchant ships, ships and planes in the waters of the Mediterranean, with the collaboration of the best professionals in the state in archeology and technical diving.
The importance of knowing the location, its morphology, its history and its relations with the surrounding territory will generate a before and after in underwater archeology for scientific research in the Iberian Peninsula

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Excavations and research in the temple of pharaoh Thutmose III at Luxor

Luxor, Egypt

During the fifteen previous archaeological campaigns, excavations were carried out on the upper terrace of the temple, where there were a large number of limestone and sandstone blocks scattered over the entire surface. These present reliefs and inscriptions belonging to the walls of the chapels that contain more than 16,000 records.
Outside the southern perimeter wall, an administrative building has been located, related to the temple in which a large number of ostraca and papyrus fragments belonging to the temple archive have been found. Its contents consisted basically of ceramic vessels, animal bones and seven stone monoliths of various sizes and materials, six of them inscribed, which are currently on display at the Museum of Luxor

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Towards modern human behavior. Socioeconomic and cultural strategies of the last Neanderthals of the Northern Plateau (Prado Vargas Cave (Cornejo, Burgos).

Prado Vargas Cave, Cornejo, Burgos, Spain

The Prado Vargas cave site is located on the south slope of the Cantabrian Mountains, connecting with northern edge of the Castilian Plateau. This cave belongs to the sixth level of the Ojo Guareña endokarst system and it preserves a karst sedimentary infilling 9 m thick, which contains several levels of terminal Mousterian occupations. The later register Neanderthal occupations dated between 54 and 39 ka (level N4) and older (levels N8 and N9) (Navazo et al., 2021). The excavations started in 2016 in the level N4, and they have yielded a large amount of archaeological remains, indicating that the cavity was visited recurrently, registering long-term occupations that include butchery activities, wood and skin works, recycle economy and activities that developed both inside and in the surrounding landscape. This level has confirmed the presence of children too, as evidenced by the presence of a Neanderthal kid tooth found in 2019

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Almoloya-Bastida Project: power, gender and kinship in a forgotten civilization of the Bronze Age

La Bastida (Totana, Murcia), Spain

The ‘Almoloya-Bastida Project’ started in 2009 with the aim of better understanding the emergence, development, and collapse of El Argar (2200-1550 cal BCE). This society of south-eastern Iberia is one of the best examples of the radical political and economic changes that took place in Early Bronze Age Europe. Our interdisciplinary, cutting-edge research has focused on two exceptional archaeological sites: La Almoloya and La Bastida, both in the region of Murcia (Spain). They are in the homeland of El Argar and were occupied during the whole Argaric period

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Exploring the Wood Technology of the Neanderthals of the Abric Romaní (Capellades, Barcelona)

Abric Romaní, Capellades, Tarragona, Spain

The Abric Romaní (Capellades, Barcelona) is a Neandertal site discovered by Amador Romaní in 1909. From 1983, and under the direction of Professor Eudald Carbonell, the annual excavations were resumed and have not stopped since then. It is a sequence of more than 40 meters of travertines alternating with beds of silts in which the existence of at least 27 high-resolution archaeological levels has been determined. The dating of the complete sequence indicates the existence of sedimentary beds between 40 and 110 ky BP. Highlighting the excavation of about 300 m2 of surface which has allowed, the reconstruction of the domestic areas of the Neandertal groups. These occupations correspond to short-term settlements, of a few days, and long-term ones, which reached several months and would group a greater number of individuals. In addition to the combustion structures identified in all levels, 120 wood imprints have been recovered

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La Draga in the context of the first Neolithic communities in the peninsula

Banyoles, Girona, Spain

La Draga, dated between 5300-5000 cal BC, is the only lake-dwelling site in the north-east of the Iberian Peninsula. It was discovered in 1990 when the land surrounding the lake was being arranged to accommodate the rowing competition in the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. Since then, the site has been excavated in several phases. The first field season took place as a rescue project, when the preservation of organic material was observed. Later the excavation continued as a systematic research project under the supervision of Josep Tarrús, Julia Chinchilla and Àngel Bosch. Finally, from 2008 until the present day, the research project continues as under the direction of the Archaeological Museum of Catalonia -MAC-, the Autonomous University of Barcelona -UAB- and the Spanish National Research Council –CSIC-IMF, Barcelona-. The site has an extension estimated around 10.000 and 15,000 m2 and the area excavated is of 1000 m2, representing between 5-7% of the total area of the site

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Evolution of rituals, beliefs and religious-funerary practices in Oxyrhynchus. From the XXVIth Dynasty to the Christian-Byzantine period

The Oxyrhynchus site (El-Bahnasa, Egypt) is located 190 km. south of Cairo

The Archaeological Site of Oxyrhynchus (El-Bahnasa), the ancient city of Per Medyed is located at 190 km south of Cairo.
The Archaeological Mission of the University of Barcelona has the concession since 1992, a complex place where we can find burials from Saite Period to Christian-Byzantine times, including the Persian and Ptolemaic-Roman World (664 BC- 7th century).
Both the Saite tombs as Persian and Roman tombs are built with white limestones blocks (the blocks are bigger in the Saite and Persian Period), with one or more funerary chambers and offering chambers or Rituals chambers. In some cases have still the vaulted ceilings or with the ceiling built with a large and flat white stones

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Archaeology in the city and territory of Tusculum (Italy). From archaic times to the present day

Tusculum, Rome, Italy

Since 1994, the Escuela Española de Historia y Arqueología en Roma (EEHAR-CSIC) leads the archaeological research project focused on the now-abandoned city of Tusculum, devoted to the rediscovery and study of this important ancient settlement, founded over the archaic period and situated 30 km south-east of Rome. This project is the main institutional one and it is currently one of the longest archaeological research frame of a foreign institution in Italy

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Tagua Tagua Lake: life and death of Ice Age hunter-gatherers in South America

San Vicente de Tagua Tagua, Chile

The present proposal seeks to continue our research carried out in the former Tagua Tagua lake, located in central Chile. This locality has a remarkable archaeological potential, which has only recently begun to be systematically studied. Traditional research, as well as our new findings supported by PALARQ Foundation, has documented three late Pleistocene archaeological sites in a very limited area, dated around 12600 – 11600 yr cal BP. All of them show undisturbed human-megafauna interaction, consisting in lithic artifacts and debris spatially associated with cultural-modified bones as well with anthropogenic hearths

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Pintia Project: creation of infrastructural and museographic bases for research, conservation and dissemination of knowledge of the Vacceo-Roman oppidum of Pintia.

Pintia Archaeological Zone between the municipalities of Padilla de Duero/Peñafiel and Pesquera de Duero, Valladolid, Spain

The Pintia Project was born in 1999 thanks to a project financed byl the Ministry of Science and Technology in which numerous companies and public and private entities collaborated to create infrastructures and investigate and disseminate the knowledge generated from this vaccaean oppidum. Some of these companies, such as Tempos Vega-Sicilia Group, still collaborate with the project more than twenty years later and have been incorporated into the CEVFW Board of Trustees

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Autigasta and Huaycama. Archaeology of indigenous peasant spaces and Spanish colonial estancias in the valley of Catamarca, Argentina (16th-18th centuries)

Santa Cruz, department of Valle Viejo, in the province of Catamarca, Argentina

The main aim of this project is to produce and to explain the archaeological record of the old Autigasta settlements, both before and after the Spanish conquest and colonisation. Despite the substantial amount of research on pre-Hispanic settlements and the growing interest in the colonial era in Argentina, the project offers several novel and previously unexplored approaches on the study of pre-Hispanic and colonial communities in the northwest of Argentina

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