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To understand the neolithisation of Europe as an historical process we require a precise knowledge of regional variation. Whilst the rich and brilliant regional Palaeolithic record in North Iberia attracted the interest of the first prehistorians, the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition was rarely studied. It wasn’t until the 1980s that a specific study of this period was undertaken in Northern Spain. In the last few decades, great progress has been made in understanding the process of change that led to the disappearance of the last hunter-gatherer societies and the development of a new cultural reality.

This permits a more ambitious approach that would have been difficult to imagine just a few years ago, and allows us to test the hypothesis of a ‘frontier situation’ in Northern Iberia, as observed in other parts of Europe during the early Neolithic. To do this, we must resolve longstanding questions surrounding the ‘end of the Asturian culture’ and the apparent coetaneity of Mesolithic and Neolithic sites. Crucially however, we must also generate new categories of data to determine more precisely change and continuity in the region during the transition to the Neolithic: data that enable us to assess the potential replacement of populations and envision changes in mobility and the probable modifications in the economic use of coastal areas. Fundamentally, we must determine the type of activities carried out at the sites belonging to this period.

This will require the integration of methodologies that have never before been applied in the region with the current best practice working methods. This will be achieved through the coordinated action of an international and multi-disciplinary team of researchers, empowering cooperation between different disciplines, such as geology, geography, chemistry, geochemistry, spectroscopy, genetics, and physical anthropology, as well as different specialties within archaeology (geoarchaeology, lithic technology, traceology, archaeozoology, etc.). The 18 team members work in 14 research centers in Spain, Portugal, France, United Kingdom, Germany, and South Africa. The impact of the formation of a team of this kind will be substantial, as it will encourage cooperation, now and in the future, between researchers developing cutting-edge methodologies which in many cases complement one another.

The team members and resources available in the collaborating institutions will make it possible to accomplish the general objectives:

1. To define, from the archaeological point of view, the end of the Mesolithic in the western sector of the northern Spanish coast.

2. To achieve a more precise comprehension of the elements of change and continuity in the course of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition.

3. To generate a tested model for the adoption of the Neolithic way of life in the region.