Project acronym AgricUrb
Project The Agricultural Origins of Urban Civilization
Researcher (PI) Amy Marie Bogaard
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2012-StG_20111124
Summary The establishment of farming is a pivotal moment in human history, setting the stage for the emergence of class-based society and urbanization. Monolithic views of the nature and development of early agriculture, however, have prevented clear understanding of how exactly farming fuelled, shaped and sustained the emergence of complex societies. A breakthrough in archaeological approach is needed to determine the actual roles of farming in the emergence of social complexity. The methodology required must push beyond conventional interpretation of the most direct farming evidence – archaeobotanical remains of crops and associated arable weeds – to reconstruct not only what crops were grown, but also how, where and why farming was practised. Addressing these related aspects, in contexts ranging from early agricultural villages to some of the world’s earliest cities, would provide the key to unraveling the contribution of farming to the development of lasting social inequalities. The research proposed here takes a new interdisciplinary approach combining archaeobotany, plant stable isotope chemistry and functional plant ecology, building on groundwork laid in previous research by the applicant. These approaches will be applied to two relatively well researched areas, western Asia and Europe, where a series of sites that chart multiple pathways to early complex societies offer rich plant and other bioarchaeological assemblages. The proposed project will set a wholly new standard of insight into early farming and its relationship with early civilization, facilitating similar approaches in other parts of the world and the construction of comparative perspectives on the global significance of early agriculture in social development.
Summary
The establishment of farming is a pivotal moment in human history, setting the stage for the emergence of class-based society and urbanization. Monolithic views of the nature and development of early agriculture, however, have prevented clear understanding of how exactly farming fuelled, shaped and sustained the emergence of complex societies. A breakthrough in archaeological approach is needed to determine the actual roles of farming in the emergence of social complexity. The methodology required must push beyond conventional interpretation of the most direct farming evidence – archaeobotanical remains of crops and associated arable weeds – to reconstruct not only what crops were grown, but also how, where and why farming was practised. Addressing these related aspects, in contexts ranging from early agricultural villages to some of the world’s earliest cities, would provide the key to unraveling the contribution of farming to the development of lasting social inequalities. The research proposed here takes a new interdisciplinary approach combining archaeobotany, plant stable isotope chemistry and functional plant ecology, building on groundwork laid in previous research by the applicant. These approaches will be applied to two relatively well researched areas, western Asia and Europe, where a series of sites that chart multiple pathways to early complex societies offer rich plant and other bioarchaeological assemblages. The proposed project will set a wholly new standard of insight into early farming and its relationship with early civilization, facilitating similar approaches in other parts of the world and the construction of comparative perspectives on the global significance of early agriculture in social development.
Max ERC Funding
1 199 647 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-02-01, End date: 2017-01-31
Project acronym CALENDARS
Project Calendars in late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: standardization and fixation
Researcher (PI) Sacha David Stern
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH6, ERC-2012-ADG_20120411
Summary This project will study how calendars evolved in late antique and medieval societies towards ever increasing standardization and fixation. The study of calendars has been neglected by historians as a technical curiosity; but in fact, the calendar was at the heart of ancient and medieval culture, as a structured concept of time, and as an organizing principle of social life.
The history of calendars in late Antiquity and the Middle Ages was a complex social and cultural process, closely related to politics, science, and religion. The standardization and fixation of calendars was related in Antiquity to the rise of large, centralized empires in the Mediterranean and Near East, and in the Middle Ages, to the rise of the monotheistic, universalist religions of Christianity and Islam. The standardization and fixation of calendars contributed also, more widely, to the formation of a unified and universal culture in the ancient and medieval worlds.
The standardization and fixation of ancient and medieval calendars will be analyzed by focusing on four, specific manifestations of this process: (1) the diffusion and standardization of the seven-day week in the Roman Empire; (2) the production of hemerologia (comparative calendar tables) in late Antiquity; (3) the use of Jewish calendar fixed cycles in medieval manuscripts; (4) the production and diffusion of monographs on the calendar by medieval Muslim, Christian, and Jewish scholars, especially al-Biruni’s Chronology of the Ancient Nations and Isaac Israeli’s Yesod Olam. Study of these four research areas will enable us to formulate a general interpretation and explanation of how and why calendars became increasingly standardized and fixed.
This will be the first ever study of calendars on this scale, covering a wide range of historical periods and cultures, and involving a wide range of disciplines: social history, ancient and medieval astronomy and mathematics, study of religions, literature, epigraphy, and codicology.
Summary
This project will study how calendars evolved in late antique and medieval societies towards ever increasing standardization and fixation. The study of calendars has been neglected by historians as a technical curiosity; but in fact, the calendar was at the heart of ancient and medieval culture, as a structured concept of time, and as an organizing principle of social life.
The history of calendars in late Antiquity and the Middle Ages was a complex social and cultural process, closely related to politics, science, and religion. The standardization and fixation of calendars was related in Antiquity to the rise of large, centralized empires in the Mediterranean and Near East, and in the Middle Ages, to the rise of the monotheistic, universalist religions of Christianity and Islam. The standardization and fixation of calendars contributed also, more widely, to the formation of a unified and universal culture in the ancient and medieval worlds.
The standardization and fixation of ancient and medieval calendars will be analyzed by focusing on four, specific manifestations of this process: (1) the diffusion and standardization of the seven-day week in the Roman Empire; (2) the production of hemerologia (comparative calendar tables) in late Antiquity; (3) the use of Jewish calendar fixed cycles in medieval manuscripts; (4) the production and diffusion of monographs on the calendar by medieval Muslim, Christian, and Jewish scholars, especially al-Biruni’s Chronology of the Ancient Nations and Isaac Israeli’s Yesod Olam. Study of these four research areas will enable us to formulate a general interpretation and explanation of how and why calendars became increasingly standardized and fixed.
This will be the first ever study of calendars on this scale, covering a wide range of historical periods and cultures, and involving a wide range of disciplines: social history, ancient and medieval astronomy and mathematics, study of religions, literature, epigraphy, and codicology.
Max ERC Funding
2 499 006 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-02-01, End date: 2018-01-31
Project acronym CArchipelago
Project The Carceral Archipelago: transnational circulations in global perspective, 1415-1960
Researcher (PI) Clare Anderson
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2012-StG_20111124
Summary This project centres ‘the carceral archipelago’ in the history of the making of the modern world. It analyses the relationships and circulations between and across convict transportation, penal colonies and labour, migration, coercion and confinement. It incorporates all the global powers engaged in transportation for the purpose of expansion and colonization - Europe, Russia, Latin America, China, Japan – over the period from Portugal’s first use of convicts in North Africa in 1415 to the dissolution of Stalin’s gulags in 1960. It uses an innovative theoretical base to shift convict transportation out of the history of crime and punishment into the new questions being raised by global and postcolonial history.
The project maps for the first time global networks of transportation and penal colonies. It undertakes case study archival research on relatively unexplored convict flows, and on the mobility of ideas and practices around transportation and other modes of confinement. It analyses its findings within the broader literature, including on transportation but also debates around the definition of freedom/ unfreedom, the importance of circulating labour, and global divergence and convergence. It redefines what we mean by ‘transportation,’ explores penal transportation as an engine of global change, de-centres Europe in historical analysis, and defines long-term impacts on economy, society and identity. It places special stress on investigating whether a transnational approach to the topic gives us a fresh theoretical starting point for studying global history that moves beyond ‘nation’ or ‘empire.’
The project lies at the intersections of national, colonial and global history, and economic, social and cultural history. It will be of wide interest to scholars of labour, migration, punishment and confinement; comparative and global history; diaspora, creolization and cultural translation; and museum and heritage studies.
Summary
This project centres ‘the carceral archipelago’ in the history of the making of the modern world. It analyses the relationships and circulations between and across convict transportation, penal colonies and labour, migration, coercion and confinement. It incorporates all the global powers engaged in transportation for the purpose of expansion and colonization - Europe, Russia, Latin America, China, Japan – over the period from Portugal’s first use of convicts in North Africa in 1415 to the dissolution of Stalin’s gulags in 1960. It uses an innovative theoretical base to shift convict transportation out of the history of crime and punishment into the new questions being raised by global and postcolonial history.
The project maps for the first time global networks of transportation and penal colonies. It undertakes case study archival research on relatively unexplored convict flows, and on the mobility of ideas and practices around transportation and other modes of confinement. It analyses its findings within the broader literature, including on transportation but also debates around the definition of freedom/ unfreedom, the importance of circulating labour, and global divergence and convergence. It redefines what we mean by ‘transportation,’ explores penal transportation as an engine of global change, de-centres Europe in historical analysis, and defines long-term impacts on economy, society and identity. It places special stress on investigating whether a transnational approach to the topic gives us a fresh theoretical starting point for studying global history that moves beyond ‘nation’ or ‘empire.’
The project lies at the intersections of national, colonial and global history, and economic, social and cultural history. It will be of wide interest to scholars of labour, migration, punishment and confinement; comparative and global history; diaspora, creolization and cultural translation; and museum and heritage studies.
Max ERC Funding
1 492 870 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-03-01, End date: 2018-02-28
Project acronym COMPAG
Project Comparative Pathways to Agriculture: the archaeobotany of parallel and divergent plant domestications across world regions
Researcher (PI) Dorian Fuller
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH6, ERC-2012-ADG_20120411
Summary The ComPAg research program will produce the first global comparative synthesis of the convergent evolution of domesticated plants and early agricultural systems based primarily on empirical archaeobotanical data. We will produce ground-breaking data on the earliest crop packages across large parts of Eurasia and Africa, comparisons of the nature of early cultivation inferred from associated weed floras, quantified time series data on evolution of domestication traits for over 30 crops, including both primary and secondary domestications. This program will pursue primary archaeobotanical research in East and Southeast Asia, India, and parts of Africa, with synthesis of existing evidence from Southwest Asia and Europe. We aim to achieve a new framework for explaining the multiple routes from foraging to agriculture on a global scale. The origins of agriculture is widely regarded as the most significant ecological and economic change in the history of human populations, constituting the basis of a fundamental demographic transition towards higher and denser human populations. Plant cultivation is common to all instances of food production that supported sedentism, and thus the origins of crop agriculture is a core issue of socioeconomic evolution in long-term human history. This program will pursue cutting edge research to produce a new critical understanding of early agricultural transformations.
Summary
The ComPAg research program will produce the first global comparative synthesis of the convergent evolution of domesticated plants and early agricultural systems based primarily on empirical archaeobotanical data. We will produce ground-breaking data on the earliest crop packages across large parts of Eurasia and Africa, comparisons of the nature of early cultivation inferred from associated weed floras, quantified time series data on evolution of domestication traits for over 30 crops, including both primary and secondary domestications. This program will pursue primary archaeobotanical research in East and Southeast Asia, India, and parts of Africa, with synthesis of existing evidence from Southwest Asia and Europe. We aim to achieve a new framework for explaining the multiple routes from foraging to agriculture on a global scale. The origins of agriculture is widely regarded as the most significant ecological and economic change in the history of human populations, constituting the basis of a fundamental demographic transition towards higher and denser human populations. Plant cultivation is common to all instances of food production that supported sedentism, and thus the origins of crop agriculture is a core issue of socioeconomic evolution in long-term human history. This program will pursue cutting edge research to produce a new critical understanding of early agricultural transformations.
Max ERC Funding
2 041 992 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-06-01, End date: 2018-05-31
Project acronym CORPI
Project Conversion, Overlapping Religiosities, Polemics, Interaction: Early Modern Iberia and Beyond
Researcher (PI) Mercedes Garcia-Arenal Rodriguez
Host Institution (HI) AGENCIA ESTATAL CONSEJO SUPERIOR DEINVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH6, ERC-2012-ADG_20120411
Summary In an early sixteenth-century treatise Martín de Figuerola, a convert from Islam who sought to convince the Muslims of Valencia and Aragon to join him, reports a story he claims to have heard from the Muslim judge of Cocentaina (Valencia). The latter had told him that, in marriage contracts between local Muslims, it was customary for women to demand that their husbands take them to the capital city of Valencia for the springtime festivities of Corpus Christi and those of the Virgin Mary in August. Simply put, the purpose of this project is to unravel the complex interplay of all the ingredients that this apparently trivial yet fascinating anecdote encapsulates. It will bring under close analysis the existence in sixteenth-century Iberia of cross-currents common to different religious groups, areas of local religiosity in which different religions overlapped, and vague or hybrid sorts of religiosity which indicate the blurring of clear ascriptions, categories, and borders. At the same time, it will also scrutinize the efforts made by different social actors (and generations of scholars after them) to establish clear, essential differentiations, to define neat categories and ascriptions, and thus to separate, reject, and stigmatize individuals and groups. The project will study adversarial relationships reconceived as dependencies, against a complex backdrop of dramatic religious change: shortly before Martín de Figuerola’s text was written, Iberia's Jews had been expelled, and a few years later its Muslims would be forced to convert to Christianity, only to be expelled in their turn a century later. The multi-faceted analysis of these phenomena will involve unearthing new archival material, most notably Inquisition trials, as well as numerous sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts (both manuscripts and early modern editions) ranging from new translations of the Qur’an and other Jewish and Islamic classics, to a rich polemical literature.
Summary
In an early sixteenth-century treatise Martín de Figuerola, a convert from Islam who sought to convince the Muslims of Valencia and Aragon to join him, reports a story he claims to have heard from the Muslim judge of Cocentaina (Valencia). The latter had told him that, in marriage contracts between local Muslims, it was customary for women to demand that their husbands take them to the capital city of Valencia for the springtime festivities of Corpus Christi and those of the Virgin Mary in August. Simply put, the purpose of this project is to unravel the complex interplay of all the ingredients that this apparently trivial yet fascinating anecdote encapsulates. It will bring under close analysis the existence in sixteenth-century Iberia of cross-currents common to different religious groups, areas of local religiosity in which different religions overlapped, and vague or hybrid sorts of religiosity which indicate the blurring of clear ascriptions, categories, and borders. At the same time, it will also scrutinize the efforts made by different social actors (and generations of scholars after them) to establish clear, essential differentiations, to define neat categories and ascriptions, and thus to separate, reject, and stigmatize individuals and groups. The project will study adversarial relationships reconceived as dependencies, against a complex backdrop of dramatic religious change: shortly before Martín de Figuerola’s text was written, Iberia's Jews had been expelled, and a few years later its Muslims would be forced to convert to Christianity, only to be expelled in their turn a century later. The multi-faceted analysis of these phenomena will involve unearthing new archival material, most notably Inquisition trials, as well as numerous sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts (both manuscripts and early modern editions) ranging from new translations of the Qur’an and other Jewish and Islamic classics, to a rich polemical literature.
Max ERC Funding
2 498 026 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-04-01, End date: 2019-03-31
Project acronym DOJSFL
Project The Dissolution of the Japanese Empire and the Struggle for Legitimacy in Postwar East Asia, 1945-1965
Researcher (PI) Barak Kushner
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2012-StG_20111124
Summary This five-year project aims to understand how political rule and legal authority were redrafted in postwar East Asia after the Japanese surrender in 1945. The research will shed light on the social and political transformations that continue to have deep resonance in our world in the form of East Asia’s regional alliances and Japan’s relations with its closest neighbors – China, North and South Korea, and Taiwan. The renovation of East Asia after the fall of the Japanese empire has mainly been written from a western perspective, owing to the preponderance of postwar American scholarship and its political dominance, but also the systematic declassification and easy access to government and private archival papers. Even with the economic rise and growing importance of contemporary China, the region’s understanding of its own past and its internal dynamics remain deeply rooted to the contours of the manner in which World War II ended. This narrative is linked to the process of how Japanese imperial rule was judged at the local level through war crimes trials and the pursuit of justice against imperial supporters. The search for war criminals, collaborators or suspected traitors offered a means to resolve the upturned former imperial hierarchies, dealing with grudges and finding justice for committed atrocities. Such moves demonstrated that the new authorities were “just,” a crucial element to bolster domestic and international mobilization campaigns for support. This new research makes clear that Japan’s sudden surrender in no way signified that the country would immediately disavow its extensive imperial ideology; such a move would require a long time to inculcate.
Summary
This five-year project aims to understand how political rule and legal authority were redrafted in postwar East Asia after the Japanese surrender in 1945. The research will shed light on the social and political transformations that continue to have deep resonance in our world in the form of East Asia’s regional alliances and Japan’s relations with its closest neighbors – China, North and South Korea, and Taiwan. The renovation of East Asia after the fall of the Japanese empire has mainly been written from a western perspective, owing to the preponderance of postwar American scholarship and its political dominance, but also the systematic declassification and easy access to government and private archival papers. Even with the economic rise and growing importance of contemporary China, the region’s understanding of its own past and its internal dynamics remain deeply rooted to the contours of the manner in which World War II ended. This narrative is linked to the process of how Japanese imperial rule was judged at the local level through war crimes trials and the pursuit of justice against imperial supporters. The search for war criminals, collaborators or suspected traitors offered a means to resolve the upturned former imperial hierarchies, dealing with grudges and finding justice for committed atrocities. Such moves demonstrated that the new authorities were “just,” a crucial element to bolster domestic and international mobilization campaigns for support. This new research makes clear that Japan’s sudden surrender in no way signified that the country would immediately disavow its extensive imperial ideology; such a move would require a long time to inculcate.
Max ERC Funding
1 463 924 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-03-01, End date: 2019-02-28
Project acronym EMPIREOF2000CITIES
Project An empire of 2000 cities: urban networks and economic integration in the Roman empire
Researcher (PI) Lukas De Ligt
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH6, ERC-2012-ADG_20120411
Summary The central aims of this project are to establish the shapes of the various urban hierarchies existing in the provinces of the Roman empire and (especially) to use the quantitative properties of these hierarchies to shed new light on levels of economic integration. Should we conceptualize the urban system of the Roman world as a collection of cellular ‘modules’ which were only loosely connected by the imposition of a rudimentary administrative superstructure and by resource flows of limited significance? Or did the creation of an overarching empire favour the emergence of an economically well-integrated urban network or at least the growth of certain ‘nodal points’ which helped to tie the empire together by mediating resource flows between regions? Key topics to be explored include the physical size of cities, the overall shape of regional urban hierarchies, the role of harbour cities in connecting various parts of the empire, and the economic implications of the emergence and existence of large provincial capitals and other ‘primate cities’.
Building on spatial and economic theories from various disciplines, the project starts from the working hypothesis that the urban system of the Roman empire possessed a number of unique features which set it apart from that of the various urban system existing in the same geographical area during the early-modern period. While some of these features (such as the size of Rome) can plausibly be attributed to the fact that the Roman empire was much larger than the empires and emerging nation states of early-modern times, the project aims to demonstrate that the specific configuration of regional urban hierarchies in the Roman world also reflects levels of economic integration which fell dramatically short of those achieved in various parts of early-modern Europe.
Summary
The central aims of this project are to establish the shapes of the various urban hierarchies existing in the provinces of the Roman empire and (especially) to use the quantitative properties of these hierarchies to shed new light on levels of economic integration. Should we conceptualize the urban system of the Roman world as a collection of cellular ‘modules’ which were only loosely connected by the imposition of a rudimentary administrative superstructure and by resource flows of limited significance? Or did the creation of an overarching empire favour the emergence of an economically well-integrated urban network or at least the growth of certain ‘nodal points’ which helped to tie the empire together by mediating resource flows between regions? Key topics to be explored include the physical size of cities, the overall shape of regional urban hierarchies, the role of harbour cities in connecting various parts of the empire, and the economic implications of the emergence and existence of large provincial capitals and other ‘primate cities’.
Building on spatial and economic theories from various disciplines, the project starts from the working hypothesis that the urban system of the Roman empire possessed a number of unique features which set it apart from that of the various urban system existing in the same geographical area during the early-modern period. While some of these features (such as the size of Rome) can plausibly be attributed to the fact that the Roman empire was much larger than the empires and emerging nation states of early-modern times, the project aims to demonstrate that the specific configuration of regional urban hierarchies in the Roman world also reflects levels of economic integration which fell dramatically short of those achieved in various parts of early-modern Europe.
Max ERC Funding
2 496 560 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-06-01, End date: 2018-05-31
Project acronym EUROFARM
Project Transmission of innovations: comparison and modelling of early farming and associated technologies in Europe
Researcher (PI) Marc Marie André Georges Vander Linden
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2012-StG_20111124
Summary "This project will investigate the transmission of farming and associated technological innovations (landscape use, pottery, lithics) in the western Balkans during the 6th and 5th millennium BC through a combination of new data collection (archaeological field work, access to museum collections and literature survey), analysis and agent-based modelling. The research area provides a unique opportunity to observe the creation and initial dispersal of the two cultural streams (inland and maritime) responsible for the introduction of farming across much of Europe. This project will be the first one to consider explicitly this process from the point of view of the transmission of innovations, that is how one becomes a farmer. The analytical work will characterise the competences and knowledge required for the transmission of each selected technological innovation. The agent-based modelling will aim at comparing these technologies together and weighing their respective impact in shaping the variability between the inland and maritime streams of neolithisation. Thanks to its combination of robust analytical work and modelling, this project will achieve the difficult balance between reflecting the complexity inherent to each technology, and the need for abstraction required for comparison."
Summary
"This project will investigate the transmission of farming and associated technological innovations (landscape use, pottery, lithics) in the western Balkans during the 6th and 5th millennium BC through a combination of new data collection (archaeological field work, access to museum collections and literature survey), analysis and agent-based modelling. The research area provides a unique opportunity to observe the creation and initial dispersal of the two cultural streams (inland and maritime) responsible for the introduction of farming across much of Europe. This project will be the first one to consider explicitly this process from the point of view of the transmission of innovations, that is how one becomes a farmer. The analytical work will characterise the competences and knowledge required for the transmission of each selected technological innovation. The agent-based modelling will aim at comparing these technologies together and weighing their respective impact in shaping the variability between the inland and maritime streams of neolithisation. Thanks to its combination of robust analytical work and modelling, this project will achieve the difficult balance between reflecting the complexity inherent to each technology, and the need for abstraction required for comparison."
Max ERC Funding
1 499 832 €
Duration
Start date: 2012-10-01, End date: 2017-09-30
Project acronym EVO-HAFT
Project Evolution of stone tool hafting in the Palaeolithic
Researcher (PI) Veerle, Lutgard, Petra Rots
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITE DE LIEGE
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2012-StG_20111124
Summary "Palaeolithic stone tool hafting has been considered important for decades, both in terms of technological and cognitive evolutions, but it has been hard to design methods that allow detailed insight into the appearance of hafting and its evolution through time. The main reason is that handles were manufactured from organic materials and these are only rarely preserved. The issue thus appears to largely escapes us, but as finds become more and more numerous, promising new techniques have also been developed, which allow a more detailed investigation of hafting. It has been demonstrated that a microscopic investigation of stone tools allows a distinction between tools that were used in the hand and those that were mounted in / on a handle, as well as an interpretation of the hafting arrangement. Knowing whether and how stone tools were hafted provides crucial data for improving our understanding of past human behaviour. It is invaluable for a better comprehension of technological evolutions, it provides insight into the organic tool component that is rarely preserved, and it allows understanding the complete life cycle of stone tools. The goal of this research project is to gain insights in the appearance, regional and chronological variability, and evolution of Palaeolithic stone tool hafting in Europe and the remaining Old World through a comprehensive functional investigation of key sites, which includes the analysis of wear traces and residues, bio/physico-chemical analyses, next to an elaborate experimental program. The proposed project starts from the conviction that many of the changes observed during the Palaeolithic can be understood based on functional data. Consequently, this research project will contribute significantly to our understanding of archaeological assemblages and their variability, and of past human behaviour and its evolution through time."
Summary
"Palaeolithic stone tool hafting has been considered important for decades, both in terms of technological and cognitive evolutions, but it has been hard to design methods that allow detailed insight into the appearance of hafting and its evolution through time. The main reason is that handles were manufactured from organic materials and these are only rarely preserved. The issue thus appears to largely escapes us, but as finds become more and more numerous, promising new techniques have also been developed, which allow a more detailed investigation of hafting. It has been demonstrated that a microscopic investigation of stone tools allows a distinction between tools that were used in the hand and those that were mounted in / on a handle, as well as an interpretation of the hafting arrangement. Knowing whether and how stone tools were hafted provides crucial data for improving our understanding of past human behaviour. It is invaluable for a better comprehension of technological evolutions, it provides insight into the organic tool component that is rarely preserved, and it allows understanding the complete life cycle of stone tools. The goal of this research project is to gain insights in the appearance, regional and chronological variability, and evolution of Palaeolithic stone tool hafting in Europe and the remaining Old World through a comprehensive functional investigation of key sites, which includes the analysis of wear traces and residues, bio/physico-chemical analyses, next to an elaborate experimental program. The proposed project starts from the conviction that many of the changes observed during the Palaeolithic can be understood based on functional data. Consequently, this research project will contribute significantly to our understanding of archaeological assemblages and their variability, and of past human behaviour and its evolution through time."
Max ERC Funding
1 192 300 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-01-01, End date: 2017-12-31
Project acronym FIGHT
Project FIGHT – Fighting Monopolies, Defying Empires 1500-1750: a Comparative Overview of Free Agents and Informal Empires in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire
Researcher (PI) Catia Alexandra Pereira Antunes
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2012-StG_20111124
Summary How did free agents (entrepreneurs operating outside of the state-sponsored monopolies) in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire react to the creation of colonial monopolies (royal monopolies and chartered companies) by centralized states between 1500 and 1750? This question will be answered by looking at the role individuals played in the construction of informal empires, defined as a multitude of self-organized networks operating world-wide, whose main goal was safeguarding personal advantages and maximizing profits, in spite of state intervention.
Self-organized networks of free agents fought royal monopolies held by the Ottoman Sultans, the Iberian and French Kings and the Dutch, English, Swedish and Danish chartered companies. Free agents, their families and networks operated, in the Atlantic and/or Asia, across geographical borders between empires, went beyond the restrictions imposed by religious differences, ethnicity, defying the interests of the central states in Europe and Asia, questioning loyalties and redefining identities. This informal empire brought to fruition by the individual choices of free agents and their networks as a reaction to the State imposed monopolies was, I hypothesize, a borderless, self-organized, often cross-cultural, multi-ethnic, pluri-national and stateless world.
My approach is innovative in that it employs a theoretical grid for the analysis of the instances in which Early Modern monopolies were challenged, mediated, co-opted or simply hijacked by free agents. My model delineates actions and re-actions such as illegal activities, cooperative strategies or extensive collaboration between networks and the central states. Based on the unique comparison between Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire, as well as in the analyses of the Atlantic and Asian expansions of European powers, my proposal will pioneer a new approach to the comparative history of empires during the Early Modern period.
Summary
How did free agents (entrepreneurs operating outside of the state-sponsored monopolies) in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire react to the creation of colonial monopolies (royal monopolies and chartered companies) by centralized states between 1500 and 1750? This question will be answered by looking at the role individuals played in the construction of informal empires, defined as a multitude of self-organized networks operating world-wide, whose main goal was safeguarding personal advantages and maximizing profits, in spite of state intervention.
Self-organized networks of free agents fought royal monopolies held by the Ottoman Sultans, the Iberian and French Kings and the Dutch, English, Swedish and Danish chartered companies. Free agents, their families and networks operated, in the Atlantic and/or Asia, across geographical borders between empires, went beyond the restrictions imposed by religious differences, ethnicity, defying the interests of the central states in Europe and Asia, questioning loyalties and redefining identities. This informal empire brought to fruition by the individual choices of free agents and their networks as a reaction to the State imposed monopolies was, I hypothesize, a borderless, self-organized, often cross-cultural, multi-ethnic, pluri-national and stateless world.
My approach is innovative in that it employs a theoretical grid for the analysis of the instances in which Early Modern monopolies were challenged, mediated, co-opted or simply hijacked by free agents. My model delineates actions and re-actions such as illegal activities, cooperative strategies or extensive collaboration between networks and the central states. Based on the unique comparison between Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire, as well as in the analyses of the Atlantic and Asian expansions of European powers, my proposal will pioneer a new approach to the comparative history of empires during the Early Modern period.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 933 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-01-01, End date: 2017-12-31
