Project description
Following the footsteps of early human colonisation in South America
Despite the size and geographical importance of north-western South America, the study of the first human colonisation in the region is limited and incomplete. However, the human journey to this region during the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene period impacts a wide range of disciplines from geography to molecular biology. This is because human colonisation in a vast and diverse region took place during fundamental climatic and environmental changes. During this period, megafauna was extinct, plants were domesticated, and a remarkable diversity in human groups was developed. The EU-funded LASTJOURNEY project will investigate the human colonisation process by using the archaeological and palaeoecological data across the diverse environments of South America.
Objective
Understanding the human journey of global colonisation is the history of modern humanity and the development of the diverse characteristics of peoples and cultures around the world. This five-year interdisciplinary project will investigate the peopling of South America, the last continental terra incognita (other than Antarctica) to be colonised by humans, constituting a virtually unprecedented migration of modern humans across richly diverse, empty landscapes during the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene transition. Situated at the geographical gateway to the continent, the project will investigate one of the most momentous demographic dispersals of our species into the diverse environments of north-western South America, encompassing coasts, savannahs and lowland, Sub Andean and Andean tropical forests. This process took place amidst one of the most significant climatic, environmental, and subsistence regime shifts in human history, which contributed to the extinction of megafauna, plant domestication, and today’s remarkable diversity of indigenous South American groups.
Despite its geographical importance and a wealth of archaeological and palaeoecological data across its diverse environments, north-western South America has only been given cursory consideration to understand processes of human dispersion. This project will redress this imbalance by applying an innovative interdisciplinary approach that integrates state-of-art archaeology, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, palaeoclimatology, palaeoecology, ancient environmental DNA and isotope studies. The results will provide a global comparative perspective to the study of Late Pleistocene human colonisations, hunter-gatherer adaptations, the demise of megafauna and the beginning of plant cultivation and domestication. The results of the project have broader implications not only for archaeology but also for geography, palaeoclimate, palaeoecology, and molecular biology.
Fields of science
- humanitieshistory and archaeologyhistory
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencespalaeontologypaleoecology
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesagriculturehorticulture
- humanitieshistory and archaeologyarchaeologybioarchaeology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmolecular biology
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Funding Scheme
ERC-ADG - Advanced GrantHost institution
EX4 4QJ Exeter
United Kingdom