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This paper examines agriculture, farming and dietary resources in east Crete, and re-evaluates the role of grape and olive in its prehistoric economy, these being key in debates on the emergence of social complexity. To do so bioarchaeological, paleoenvironmental and landscape survey data from the Bronze Age town at Palaikastro and its territory are combined. The results indicate a highly compartmentalised landscape, including intensive crop cultivation and extensive animal herding with careful monitoring to maintain productivity. A heightened specialisation in ovicaprine management at Palaikastro and east Crete seems to be delineated. Marine resources were regularly exploited from easily accessible coastal areas. Other activities included viticulture since the Early Minoan period, with the possible involvement of several houses in wine-making. A final important activity in the area was large-scale olive tree management since the Final Neolithic period and through to the Late Bronze Age, that seems to be entangled with ovicaprine herding and grazing. Thus, the demand for olive oil production does not seem to have been the driving force behind the intensification of the tree management, at least initially, but a corollary of its use in other aspects of the local economy. © 2021 The Authors The PALAP project was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant on 'Urbanization in Bronze Age Crete: between palace and landscape at Palaikastro' (2014–16), The Institute for Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP), the Hal Jackman Foundation and the British School at Athens, while the Universities of Toronto (Canada), Bristol and Nottingham (UK) also fully supported and financed parts of the project. Drs Alexandra Livarda and Hector A. Orengo are Ramón y Cajal researchers funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (RyC-2017-22105 and RyC-2016-19637 respectively), while Dr Livarda was further supported during the writing up of this paper by an I + D + i grant (PID2019-107605GB-100). Dr Llorenç Picornell-Gelabert’ PALAP charcoal study was financed by a Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación fellowship (IJCI-2015_24550) awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Economy and Competitiveness. Dr. Veropoulidou’s PALAP malacological study and Dr. Cañellas-Boltà and Prof. Riera-Mora’ s palaeonevironmental study were also partly financed by a private donor, Mr Anuj Malhotra, to whom they are very grateful. Peer reviewed

There are strong interactions between an economic system and its ecological context. In this sense, livestock have been an integral part of human economies since the Neolithic, contributing significantly to the creation and maintenance of agricultural anthropized landscapes. For this reason, in the frame of the ERC-StG project ’ZooMWest’ we collected and analyzed thousands of zooarchaeological data from NE Iberia. By considering these data in comparison with ecological indicators (archaeobotanical remains) and archaeological evidence (settlement characteristics and their distribution) this paper seeks to characterize changes in animal production and the relationship between people, livestock, and their environment. These methods allow for an investigation of the topic at different scales (site, zone, territory) with a broad diachronic perspective, and for consideration of orography and cultural traditions alongside climatic factors. Through this integration of various streams of evidence, we aim to better understand the structure of ancient economic systems and the way they conditioned human decision-making on animal production. Results show a shifting relationship with the territory between the Bronze Age and Late Antiquity, in which market requirements and an economic model with a higher degree of integration increasingly influenced husbandry strategies. These processes are reflected in changes in land use and forms of territorial occupation, although along different rhythms and trajectories. This work was financially supported by the ERC-Starting Grant ZooMWest–Zooarchaeology and Mobility in the Western Mediterranean: Husbandry production from the Late Bronze Age to the Late Antiquity (award number 716298), funded by the European Research Council Agency (ERCEA) under the direction of Sílvia Valenzuela-Lamas. In cooperation with PID2019-110022GB -100 MOBICEX (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, ES); 2017 SGR 995-GRC-Archaeology of Social Dynamics (ASD)-CSIC (Generalitat de Catalunya, ES). The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. We acknowledge support of the publication fee by the CSIC Open Access Publication Support Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI). Peer reviewed