Articles from the 2nd Meeting of the Association for Ground Stone Tools ResearchThe transformation of food ingredients into meals corresponds to complex choices resulting from the interplay of environmental and cultural factors: available ingredients, technologies of transformation, cultural perceptions of food, as well as taste and food taboos. Project PLANTCULT (ERC Consolidator Grant, GA 682529) aims to investigate prehistoric culinary cultures from the Aegean to Central Europe by focusing on plant foods and associated food preparation technologies spanning the Neolithic through to the Iron Age. Our paper offers an overview of the lines of investigation pursued within the project to address plant food preparation and related stone tool technologies. The wide range of plant foods from the area under investigation (ground cereals, breads, beer, pressed grapes, split pulses, etc.) suggests great variability of culinarypreparations. Yet, little is known of the transformation technologies involved (e.g., pounding, grinding, and boiling). Changes in size and shape of grinding stones over time have been associated with efficiency of grinding, specific culinary practices and socioeconomic organisation. Informed by ethnography and experimental data, as well as ancient texts, PLANTCULT integrates archa eobotanical food remains and associated equipment to address these issues. We utilize a multifaceted approach including the study of both published archaeological data and original assemblages from key sites. We aim to develop methods for understanding the interaction of tool type, use-wear formation and associated plant micro- and macro- remains in the archaeological record. Our experimental program aims to generate (a) reference material for the identification of plant processing in the archaeological record and (b) ingredients for the preparation of experimental plant foods, which hold a key role to unlocking the recipes of prehistory. Plant processing technologies are thus investigated across space and through time, in an attempt to explore the dynamic role of culinary transformation of plant ingredients into shaping social and cultural identities in prehistoric Europe.The authors wish to thank the following archaeologists for providing ground stone tools for study in the context of project PLANTCULT: Alexander Chohadziev, Areti Chondrogianni-Metoki, Pascal Darcque, Sonia Dimaki, Georgia Karametrou-Mentesidi, Stavros Kotsos, Chaido Koukouli-Chrysanthaki, Dimitra Malamidou, Nikos Merousis, Maria Pappa, Aikaterini Papanthimou, Liana Stefani, Zoi Tsirtsoni, Christina Ziota. This work has been funded by the European Research Council project “PLANTCULT: Identifying the food cultures of ancient Europe”, under the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant Agreement No 682529, Consolidator Grant 2016- 2021).