Summary

Recovering evidence for use of plants in the Palaeolithic is challenging, both because of the very long time period (around 1.2 million years in Europe) and the small amount of evidence that survives.  Despite this, it is clear that plants were used as food, medicine and raw materials, since earliest times.  In this presentation, Karen will outline how evidence for plant use is reconstructed and will discuss the way a better understanding of use of plants by Palaeolithic hominins can inform on their lives and their use of the landscape, while also feeding into a better understanding of modern humans and ourselves, today. 

Biography 

Karen is an ICREA research professor in the Department of Prehistory, Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), since 2008.  Between 2005-2008 she had a Marie Curie Fellowship based at the University of Sydney (Austalia) and University of York (UK). Before that, while her 5 children were small, she ran field projects investigating the earliest human populations in her native Scotland.  Today, much of her work is focused on finding the evidence and reconstructing the use of plants in the Palaeolithic.