The main motivation of the current project is the absence from Romania and Southeastern Europe of the large integrated databases regarding past fauna (e.g. shells, snails, fish bones, reptiles, birds, mammals, etc.) and vegetation (e.g. seeds, charcoal, pollen, etc.) discovered in archaeological contexts, an indispensable tool in modern research. In these circumstances, we will try to realize a complex integrated analysis of the interaction between society, environment, and biodiversity in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene on the Romanian actual territory (c. 40,000-650 cal. BC). This chronological range was a critical period in the evolution of humanity, which gradually turned from hunter-gatherer communities into farmers-breeders communities. Thus, the target period begins with the Upper Paleolithic period, continues with Mesolithic, Neolithic, Eneolithic, Bronze Age, and it ends with the First Iron Age (Hallstatt) (Petrescu-Dâmbovița, Vulpe 2001). The project is designed to provide a higher-resolution picture of the faunal and vegetal evolution for a longer period (more than 40,000 years), in correlation with human communities from the target area, and their food preferences, environmental resources management, and particular adaptive strategies. Human activities related to food procurement (diet), either animal (e.g. gathering, fishing, hunting, and livestock breeding) or vegetal (e.g. gathering and cultivation) are determined by techno-economic and socio-cultural patterns, but also by the environmental conditions and resources availability. A complex subject as human-environment interactions and vegetal-animal environment exploitation, based exclusively on the archaeological data (animal bones and vegetal remains) and various interdisciplinary analysis (e.g. isotopic investigations, paleogenetic studies, etc.) is very challenging (Balasse et al. 2016; Evin et al. 2015; Frantz et al. 2016). Thus, a bioarchaeological approach (zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical) will provide the essential information for realizing a bio-mapping of the past animal and vegetation from the Romanian Prehistory. Various aspects will be detailed: animal and plant species found in Romanian prehistoric sites, the diet patterns of past human communities, seasonality patterns for animals and plants exploitation, the characterization of hunting activities, fishing, gathering, cultivation and livestock breeding. Finally, the accumulated data will be integrated into a GIS analysis (multivariate spatial analysis), which will highlight the geographical distribution and frequency of different animal taxa and vegetal taxa (from the Romania current borders), but also their temporal distribution (along different prehistoric periods). This approach will create a horizontal (geographic) and vertical (chronologically) mapping of fauna and plant spectrum used by prehistoric communities taking into account the present territory of Romania in the last 40,000 years. Moreover, the linking of the multiple statistical data (archaeozoological, archaeobotanical and archaeological) will help us to obtain valuable and new information about anthropic effects on biodiversity, and to the environment, in correlation with the climatic conditions/changes, available resources, and human migrations key-events (e.g. arrival of the first farmers from Southeastern Europe in Early Neolithic, the second Neolithic migration at beginning of the Chalcolithic, or arrival of the Indo-Europeans). The project results will be integrated into the future European Archaeobotanical Archaeozoological databases, and that would give to this project an European dimension and thus decrease the isolation of current Romanian research in this area.

The primary objectives of the project is the development of a complex analytical instrument for national and European researchers, based on bioarchaeological data and valorize the national cultural heritage, but also the integration of statistical GIS methods, in order to know the fundamental evolution and distribution of fauna and flora (and implicitly human consumption, paleoeconomy, food procuring strategies, key-events that affect the human diet) from geographically (horizontal) and chronologically (vertical) perspective.