FROM STONE TO HOME: Polished stone tool biographies and their social and economic impact in the Aegean Neolithic

ERC-2023-CoG: 101125419 From Stone to Home: This ambitious ERC-funded project, From Stone to Home, aims to uncover the social and economic transformations that shaped Neolithic communities in the Aegean from 6800 to 3300 BC. At its core lies a deceptively simple object: the polished stone tool. Through these tools—axes, adzes, chisels, and wedges—the project explores how early societies began to perceive, assign, and negotiate the concepts of value and wealth.

From Stone to Home challenges the long-held narrative that Neolithic societies were largely egalitarian. Instead, it explores how these communities may have developed early forms of inequality, prestige, and desirability—laying the foundation for later hierarchical civilisations.

The project’s integration of archaeological and geological science in combination with sociological and anthropological theory will culminate in new models of prehistoric value systems. Its findings will be disseminated through academic publications and an open-access database, offering an unprecedented resource for both scholars and the public with an interest in polished stone tools.

Through the lens of the polished stone tool, From Stone to Home promises to reshape our understanding of how material culture influenced – and reflected – the earliest steps towards economic and social inequality in human history.