Project description
The role of agriculture in the Aegean region in the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age
The causes behind the collapse of Bronze Age societies around the Aegean Sea has been speculated upon for many years. Owing to the limited knowledge regarding the role of agriculture during this period, a new approach is needed. The EU-funded DarkSeeds project will combine new and established techniques to re-examine the role of agriculture during the Late Bronze Age – Early Iron Age (LBA-EIA) period in the region. Researchers will examine archaeobotanical material from six sites across the Aegean and apply new methodologies that combine 3D photogrammetry, machine learning-aided geometric morphometrics and targeted stable isotope analysis to infer agricultural practices and gain new insights into the processes underpinning LBA-EIA societies.
Objective
The collapse of Bronze Age societies in the Aegean led to a period known as the ‘Greek Dark Ages’ (Early Iron Age, EIA) that involved major socio-economic disruptions and transformations. The causes of these changes and their impact on the agricultural economy of these societies have been matters of a long-lasting debate. The nature of agricultural management and production in this period is largely speculative due to limited bioarchaeological data and the inherent limitations involved in the analysis of available evidence. Owing to the lack of knowledge regarding the role of agriculture in these processes of socio-economic turmoil, a new approach to the debate is needed. DarkSeeds aims to re-examine the role of agriculture to provide an evidence-based understanding and a new explanatory model of the economic changes during the Late Bronze Age (LBA) – EIA, through a novel combination of traditional and newly developed methods and emerging technologies. In particular, it will employ archaeobotanical material from six sites across the Aegean to capture spatial variability and will: (1) use standard archaeobotanical approaches, including synthesis of existing data; and (2) apply and refine a new methodology, pioneered by the supervisory team, that combines 3D photogrammetry, Machine Learning-aided Geometric Morphometrics (GMM) and targeted stable isotope analysis, and uses directly the 3D shape of cereal seeds to infer agricultural practices. This combination of traditional with advanced and newly developed scientific techniques has the potential to step-change the investigation of complex issues of agricultural change and provide new, in-depth understandings of the very processes that underpinned the LBA-EIA societies. DarkSeeds will build upon the Experienced Researcher’s expertise to equip her with an excellent toolkit, through hands-on training, that can place her at the forefront of cutting-edge research and establish her at the top of her field.
Fields of science
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
43003 Tarragona
Spain