Project description
Investigating megalithic seafaring and maritime technologies
Research into the Megalithic era in terms of mobility and symbolic identity suggests that long-distance maritime travels began in Europe during that period in history (~ 4700-4200 cal BC). This corroborates the hypothesis that shipbuilding and navigation arose in Europe earlier than in the Bronze Age. The EU-funded NEOSEA project will research neolithic seafaring and maritime technologies as well as their role in forming a new interconnected world of megalithic societies. It will model the spread of megaliths in Europe and the history of megalithic seafaring with pioneering chronological precision and determine prehistoric maritime connections, networks and migrations. Moreover, it will define the associated rise of monumental stone architecture and the rise of seafaring within sea mammal-hunting societies in Brittany.
Objective
The NEOSEA project will investigate Neolithic seafaring and maritime technologies, and their role in shaping a new interconnected world of megalithic societies. Recent research into megalithic temporality, mobility and symbolic identity suggests that the rise of long-distance maritime journeys began in Europe as early as the megalithic era. Megaliths emerged in Northwest France (~4700-4200 cal BC) and then spread over the seaways along Europe’s Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. This new discovery leads to NEOSEA’s core hypothesis that maritime journeys and new skills in shipbuilding and navigation arose in Europe much earlier than, as previously thought, in the Bronze Age. These discoveries prompt a radical reassessment of the early megalithic horizons and open a new scientific debate regarding the emergence of the maritime mobility of megalithic coastal societies, their internal organisation and what motivated their long-distance voyaging, and the rise of seafaring and maritime networks. Specific aims of the NEOSEA project are: (1) to model the spread of megaliths in Europe and the history of megalithic seafaring with pioneering chronological precision (within 20y) (2) to determine prehistoric maritime linkages, networks and migrations (3) to define the concomitant emergence of monumental stone architecture and the rise of seafaring within sea mammal-hunting societies in Brittany (4) to synthesize a model of the social and economic organization of megalithic seafaring communities, revealing the forces driving their expansion (5) to interpret these findings within a global context of cultural anthropology.
The application of Bayesian statistical modelling on a large database of radiocarbon dates coupled with aDNA, eDNA and strontium analysis will produce the first closely detailed sequence for the rise of seafaring megalithic societies and their spread across Europe.
Fields of science
- humanitieshistory and archaeologyhistory
- social sciencessociologyanthropologycultural anthropology
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistryalkaline earth metals
- humanitieshistory and archaeologyarchaeologyunderwater archaeology
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringnaval engineeringsea vessels
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Funding Scheme
ERC-STG - Starting GrantHost institution
405 30 Goeteborg
Sweden