Project acronym 15CBOOKTRADE
Project The 15th-century Book Trade: An Evidence-based Assessment and Visualization of the Distribution, Sale, and Reception of Books in the Renaissance
Researcher (PI) Cristina Dondi
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Country United Kingdom
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary The idea that underpins this project is to use the material evidence from thousands of surviving 15th-c. books, as well as unique documentary evidence — the unpublished ledger of a Venetian bookseller in the 1480s which records the sale of 25,000 printed books with their prices — to address four fundamental questions relating to the introduction of printing in the West which have so far eluded scholarship, partly because of lack of evidence, partly because of the lack of effective tools to deal with existing evidence. The book trade differs from other trades operating in the medieval and early modern periods in that the goods traded survive in considerable numbers. Not only do they survive, but many of them bear stratified evidence of their history in the form of marks of ownership, prices, manuscript annotations, binding and decoration styles. A British Academy pilot project conceived by the PI produced a now internationally-used database which gathers together this kind of evidence for thousands of surviving 15th-c. printed books. For the first time, this makes it possible to track the circulation of books, their trade routes and later collecting, across Europe and the USA, and throughout the centuries. The objectives of this project are to examine (1) the distribution and trade-routes, national and international, of 15th-c. printed books, along with the identity of the buyers and users (private, institutional, religious, lay, female, male, and by profession) and their reading practices; (2) the books' contemporary market value; (3) the transmission and dissemination of the texts they contain, their survival and their loss (rebalancing potentially skewed scholarship); and (4) the circulation and re-use of the illustrations they contain. Finally, the project will experiment with the application of scientific visualization techniques to represent, geographically and chronologically, the movement of 15th-c. printed books and of the texts they contain.
Summary
The idea that underpins this project is to use the material evidence from thousands of surviving 15th-c. books, as well as unique documentary evidence — the unpublished ledger of a Venetian bookseller in the 1480s which records the sale of 25,000 printed books with their prices — to address four fundamental questions relating to the introduction of printing in the West which have so far eluded scholarship, partly because of lack of evidence, partly because of the lack of effective tools to deal with existing evidence. The book trade differs from other trades operating in the medieval and early modern periods in that the goods traded survive in considerable numbers. Not only do they survive, but many of them bear stratified evidence of their history in the form of marks of ownership, prices, manuscript annotations, binding and decoration styles. A British Academy pilot project conceived by the PI produced a now internationally-used database which gathers together this kind of evidence for thousands of surviving 15th-c. printed books. For the first time, this makes it possible to track the circulation of books, their trade routes and later collecting, across Europe and the USA, and throughout the centuries. The objectives of this project are to examine (1) the distribution and trade-routes, national and international, of 15th-c. printed books, along with the identity of the buyers and users (private, institutional, religious, lay, female, male, and by profession) and their reading practices; (2) the books' contemporary market value; (3) the transmission and dissemination of the texts they contain, their survival and their loss (rebalancing potentially skewed scholarship); and (4) the circulation and re-use of the illustrations they contain. Finally, the project will experiment with the application of scientific visualization techniques to represent, geographically and chronologically, the movement of 15th-c. printed books and of the texts they contain.
Max ERC Funding
1 999 172 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-04-01, End date: 2019-03-31
Project acronym ADaPt
Project Adaptation, Dispersals and Phenotype: understanding the roles of climate,
natural selection and energetics in shaping global hunter-gatherer adaptability
Researcher (PI) Jay Stock
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Country United Kingdom
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary Relative to other species, humans are characterised by considerable biological diversity despite genetic homogeneity. This diversity is reflected in skeletal variation, but we lack sufficient understanding of the underlying mechanisms to adequately interpret the archaeological record. The proposed research will address problems in our current understanding of the origins of human variation in the past by: 1) documenting and interpreting the pattern of global hunter-gatherer variation relative to genetic phylogenies and climatic variation; 2) testing the relationship between environmental and skeletal variation among genetically related hunter-gatherers from different environments; 3) examining the adaptability of living humans to different environments, through the study of energetic expenditure and life history trade-offs associated with locomotion; and 4) investigating the relationship between muscle and skeletal variation associated with locomotion in diverse environments. This will be achieved by linking: a) detailed study of the global pattern of hunter-gatherer variation in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene with; b) ground-breaking experimental research which tests the relationship between energetic stress, muscle function, and bone variation in living humans. The first component tests the correspondence between skeletal variation and both genetic and climatic history, to infer mechanisms driving variation. The second component integrates this skeletal variation with experimental studies of living humans to, for the first time, directly test adaptive implications of skeletal variation observed in the past. ADaPt will provide the first links between prehistoric hunter-gatherer variation and the evolutionary parameters of life history and energetics that may have shaped our success as a species. It will lead to breakthroughs necessary to interpret variation in the archaeological record, relative to human dispersals and adaptation in the past.
Summary
Relative to other species, humans are characterised by considerable biological diversity despite genetic homogeneity. This diversity is reflected in skeletal variation, but we lack sufficient understanding of the underlying mechanisms to adequately interpret the archaeological record. The proposed research will address problems in our current understanding of the origins of human variation in the past by: 1) documenting and interpreting the pattern of global hunter-gatherer variation relative to genetic phylogenies and climatic variation; 2) testing the relationship between environmental and skeletal variation among genetically related hunter-gatherers from different environments; 3) examining the adaptability of living humans to different environments, through the study of energetic expenditure and life history trade-offs associated with locomotion; and 4) investigating the relationship between muscle and skeletal variation associated with locomotion in diverse environments. This will be achieved by linking: a) detailed study of the global pattern of hunter-gatherer variation in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene with; b) ground-breaking experimental research which tests the relationship between energetic stress, muscle function, and bone variation in living humans. The first component tests the correspondence between skeletal variation and both genetic and climatic history, to infer mechanisms driving variation. The second component integrates this skeletal variation with experimental studies of living humans to, for the first time, directly test adaptive implications of skeletal variation observed in the past. ADaPt will provide the first links between prehistoric hunter-gatherer variation and the evolutionary parameters of life history and energetics that may have shaped our success as a species. It will lead to breakthroughs necessary to interpret variation in the archaeological record, relative to human dispersals and adaptation in the past.
Max ERC Funding
1 911 485 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-07-01, End date: 2019-06-30
Project acronym AISLES
Project Archipelagic Imperatives: Shipwreck and Lifesaving in European Societies since 1800
Researcher (PI) Henning TRuePER
Host Institution (HI) GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTLICHE ZENTREN BERLIN EV
Country Germany
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2019-COG
Summary Why does humanitarianism take the form of an archipelago, an aggregation of “single issues,” selective, resistant to generalization, and even at times inconsistent? In order to answer this question, which is crucial to, but has been sidelined in histories of humanitarianism, the project develops a novel approach. This approach homes in on the rupture of humanitarian morality with quotidian moral norms and values.
For this purpose, the project investigates the history of a particular moral norm, the imperative of saving lives from shipwreck, that emerged in the ambit of volunteer lifeboat movements from the 1820s onward. Such movements had emerged first in Britain and the Netherlands, then elsewhere, most prominently France and Germany. The imperative in question took the form of a novel unconditional norm that demanded taking counterintuitive risks in order to save lives. Previously, assistance to the shipwrecked had been situational. Moral detachment from suffering had been recognized as a value. Existential risk had constituted an exemption from lifesaving duty. Lifeboat movements overturned this quotidian moral rationale. This shift was neither determined by economic incentives nor by technological or legal innovation. The saving of lives from shipwreck thus provides an ideal laboratory, with a rich and varied source base, for understanding humanitarian-moral innovation on its own terms.
The intervention of the project is twofold. On the plane of historical knowledge, it provides a model for the deep contextual analysis of moral culture in terms of the emergence, sustenance, representation, and insular distinctness of humanitarian imperatives. On the plane of theoretical knowledge, the project develops innovative answers to questions of moral theory, especially about the generality of norms and the conflicted relation of humanitarianism and everyday morality. The project develops novel methodological tools for combining moral theorizing and historical research.
Summary
Why does humanitarianism take the form of an archipelago, an aggregation of “single issues,” selective, resistant to generalization, and even at times inconsistent? In order to answer this question, which is crucial to, but has been sidelined in histories of humanitarianism, the project develops a novel approach. This approach homes in on the rupture of humanitarian morality with quotidian moral norms and values.
For this purpose, the project investigates the history of a particular moral norm, the imperative of saving lives from shipwreck, that emerged in the ambit of volunteer lifeboat movements from the 1820s onward. Such movements had emerged first in Britain and the Netherlands, then elsewhere, most prominently France and Germany. The imperative in question took the form of a novel unconditional norm that demanded taking counterintuitive risks in order to save lives. Previously, assistance to the shipwrecked had been situational. Moral detachment from suffering had been recognized as a value. Existential risk had constituted an exemption from lifesaving duty. Lifeboat movements overturned this quotidian moral rationale. This shift was neither determined by economic incentives nor by technological or legal innovation. The saving of lives from shipwreck thus provides an ideal laboratory, with a rich and varied source base, for understanding humanitarian-moral innovation on its own terms.
The intervention of the project is twofold. On the plane of historical knowledge, it provides a model for the deep contextual analysis of moral culture in terms of the emergence, sustenance, representation, and insular distinctness of humanitarian imperatives. On the plane of theoretical knowledge, the project develops innovative answers to questions of moral theory, especially about the generality of norms and the conflicted relation of humanitarianism and everyday morality. The project develops novel methodological tools for combining moral theorizing and historical research.
Max ERC Funding
1 912 016 €
Duration
Start date: 2020-05-01, End date: 2025-04-30
Project acronym ALFA
Project Shaping a European Scientific Scene : Alfonsine Astronomy
Researcher (PI) Matthieu Husson
Host Institution (HI) CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS
Country France
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2016-COG
Summary Alfonsine astronomy is arguably among the first European scientific achievements. It shaped a scene for actors like Regiomontanus or Copernicus. There is however little detailed historical analysis encompassing its development in its full breadth. ALFA addresses this issue by studying tables, instruments, mathematical and theoretical texts in a methodologically innovative way relying on approaches from the history of manuscript cultures, history of mathematics, and history of astronomy.
ALFA integrates these approaches not only to benefit from different perspectives but also to build new questions from their interactions. For instance the analysis of mathematical practices in astral sciences manuscripts induces new ways to analyse the documents and to think about astronomical questions.
Relying on these approaches the main objectives of ALFA are thus to:
- Retrace the development of the corpus of Alfonsine texts from its origin in the second half of the 13th century to the end of the 15th century by following, on the manuscript level, the milieus fostering it;
- Analyse the Alfonsine astronomers’ practices, their relations to mathematics, to the natural world, to proofs and justification, their intellectual context and audiences;
- Build a meaningful narrative showing how astronomers in different milieus with diverse practices shaped, also from Arabic materials, an original scientific scene in Europe.
ALFA will shed new light on the intellectual history of the late medieval period as a whole and produce a better understanding of its relations to related scientific periods in Europe and beyond. It will also produce methodological breakthroughs impacting the ways history of knowledge is practiced outside the field of ancient and medieval sciences. Efforts will be devoted to bring these results not only to the relevant scholarly communities but also to a wider audience as a resource in the public debates around science, knowledge and culture.
Summary
Alfonsine astronomy is arguably among the first European scientific achievements. It shaped a scene for actors like Regiomontanus or Copernicus. There is however little detailed historical analysis encompassing its development in its full breadth. ALFA addresses this issue by studying tables, instruments, mathematical and theoretical texts in a methodologically innovative way relying on approaches from the history of manuscript cultures, history of mathematics, and history of astronomy.
ALFA integrates these approaches not only to benefit from different perspectives but also to build new questions from their interactions. For instance the analysis of mathematical practices in astral sciences manuscripts induces new ways to analyse the documents and to think about astronomical questions.
Relying on these approaches the main objectives of ALFA are thus to:
- Retrace the development of the corpus of Alfonsine texts from its origin in the second half of the 13th century to the end of the 15th century by following, on the manuscript level, the milieus fostering it;
- Analyse the Alfonsine astronomers’ practices, their relations to mathematics, to the natural world, to proofs and justification, their intellectual context and audiences;
- Build a meaningful narrative showing how astronomers in different milieus with diverse practices shaped, also from Arabic materials, an original scientific scene in Europe.
ALFA will shed new light on the intellectual history of the late medieval period as a whole and produce a better understanding of its relations to related scientific periods in Europe and beyond. It will also produce methodological breakthroughs impacting the ways history of knowledge is practiced outside the field of ancient and medieval sciences. Efforts will be devoted to bring these results not only to the relevant scholarly communities but also to a wider audience as a resource in the public debates around science, knowledge and culture.
Max ERC Funding
1 871 250 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-09-01, End date: 2022-08-31
Project acronym AMI
Project Animals Make identities. The Social Bioarchaeology of Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic Cemeteries in North-East Europe
Researcher (PI) Kristiina MANNERMAA
Host Institution (HI) HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
Country Finland
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2019-COG
Summary AMI aims to provide a novel interpretation of social links between humans and animals in hunter-gatherer cemeteries in North-East Europe, c. 9000–7500 years ago. AMI brings together cutting-edge developments in bioarchaeological science and the latest understanding of how people’s identities form in order to study the relationships between humans and animals. Grave materials and human remains will be studied from the viewpoint of process rather than as isolated objects, and will be interpreted through their histories.
The main objectives are
1) Synthesize the animal related bioarchaeological materials in mortuary contexts in North-East Europe,
2) Conduct a systematic multimethodological analysis of the animal-derived artefacts and to study them as actors in human social identity construction,
3) Reconstruct the individual life histories of humans, animals, and animal-derived artefacts in the cemeteries, and
4) Produce models for the reconstruction of social identities based on the data from the bioanalyses, literature, and GIS.
Various contextual, qualitative and quantitative biodata from animals and humans will be analysed and compared. Correlations and differences will be explored. Intra-site spatial analyses and data already published on cemeteries will contribute significantly to the research. Ethnographic information about recent hunter-gatherers from circumpolar regions gathered from literature will support the interpretation of the results from these analyses.
The research material derives from almost 300 burials from eight sites in North-East Europe and includes, for example, unique materials from Russia that have not previously been available for modern multidisciplinary research. The project will make a significant contribution to our understanding of how humans living in the forests of North-East Europe adapted the animals they shared their environment with into their social and ideological realities and practices.
Summary
AMI aims to provide a novel interpretation of social links between humans and animals in hunter-gatherer cemeteries in North-East Europe, c. 9000–7500 years ago. AMI brings together cutting-edge developments in bioarchaeological science and the latest understanding of how people’s identities form in order to study the relationships between humans and animals. Grave materials and human remains will be studied from the viewpoint of process rather than as isolated objects, and will be interpreted through their histories.
The main objectives are
1) Synthesize the animal related bioarchaeological materials in mortuary contexts in North-East Europe,
2) Conduct a systematic multimethodological analysis of the animal-derived artefacts and to study them as actors in human social identity construction,
3) Reconstruct the individual life histories of humans, animals, and animal-derived artefacts in the cemeteries, and
4) Produce models for the reconstruction of social identities based on the data from the bioanalyses, literature, and GIS.
Various contextual, qualitative and quantitative biodata from animals and humans will be analysed and compared. Correlations and differences will be explored. Intra-site spatial analyses and data already published on cemeteries will contribute significantly to the research. Ethnographic information about recent hunter-gatherers from circumpolar regions gathered from literature will support the interpretation of the results from these analyses.
The research material derives from almost 300 burials from eight sites in North-East Europe and includes, for example, unique materials from Russia that have not previously been available for modern multidisciplinary research. The project will make a significant contribution to our understanding of how humans living in the forests of North-East Europe adapted the animals they shared their environment with into their social and ideological realities and practices.
Max ERC Funding
1 992 839 €
Duration
Start date: 2020-04-01, End date: 2025-03-31
Project acronym archaeoscape.ai
Project Exploring complexity in the archaeological landscapes of monsoon Asia using lidar and deep learning
Researcher (PI) Damian EVANS
Host Institution (HI) ECOLE FRANCAISE D'EXTREME-ORIENT
Country France
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2019-COG
Summary Compelling evidence is now emerging that tropical environments were cradles of innovation and complexity from prehistory to the present. Tropical forests in particular have long been considered marginal and inhospitable, but recent work suggests that several critical milestones were achieved in these landscapes. Vast expanses were terraformed by increasingly complex societies, often in a quest to mitigate the sharp seasonality of the monsoon. Ostensibly wild and pristine rainforests are now characterised as managed 'gardens'. The giant low-density settlement complexes of 'rainforest civilisations' anticipate the sprawling megacities of our contemporary world, and offer a laboratory for understanding the profound challenges that they create.
To date, these emerging perspectives have largely been driven by advances in palaeobotany, archaeogenetics, isotopic analyses, and contemporary rainforest ecology. Remote sensing has so far played only a modest role in this broader agenda, in spite of the unique capability of lidar technology to 'strip away' vegetation and reveal archives of human activity inscribed in the Earth's surface.
This program will tackle the core problems that currently constrain the 'lidar revolution' in archaeology: We will use a new generation of lidar technologies to greatly expand coverage in Southeast Asia, home to many of the most important and understudied rainforest landscapes. We will develop open access frameworks and infrastructures for aggregating, sharing and collaborating on new and existing lidar datasets. We will build on recent advances in artificial intelligence to develop generic models for automation and analysis, in order to move beyond localised, culturally-specific lidar applications. The net result of this work will be to create consistent, comparable datasets of human impacts on the Earth's surface, with a view to understanding trajectories of innovation and complexity in the tropical world from the deep past to the present.
Summary
Compelling evidence is now emerging that tropical environments were cradles of innovation and complexity from prehistory to the present. Tropical forests in particular have long been considered marginal and inhospitable, but recent work suggests that several critical milestones were achieved in these landscapes. Vast expanses were terraformed by increasingly complex societies, often in a quest to mitigate the sharp seasonality of the monsoon. Ostensibly wild and pristine rainforests are now characterised as managed 'gardens'. The giant low-density settlement complexes of 'rainforest civilisations' anticipate the sprawling megacities of our contemporary world, and offer a laboratory for understanding the profound challenges that they create.
To date, these emerging perspectives have largely been driven by advances in palaeobotany, archaeogenetics, isotopic analyses, and contemporary rainforest ecology. Remote sensing has so far played only a modest role in this broader agenda, in spite of the unique capability of lidar technology to 'strip away' vegetation and reveal archives of human activity inscribed in the Earth's surface.
This program will tackle the core problems that currently constrain the 'lidar revolution' in archaeology: We will use a new generation of lidar technologies to greatly expand coverage in Southeast Asia, home to many of the most important and understudied rainforest landscapes. We will develop open access frameworks and infrastructures for aggregating, sharing and collaborating on new and existing lidar datasets. We will build on recent advances in artificial intelligence to develop generic models for automation and analysis, in order to move beyond localised, culturally-specific lidar applications. The net result of this work will be to create consistent, comparable datasets of human impacts on the Earth's surface, with a view to understanding trajectories of innovation and complexity in the tropical world from the deep past to the present.
Max ERC Funding
2 748 285 €
Duration
Start date: 2020-10-01, End date: 2025-09-30
Project acronym ArmEn
Project Armenia Entangled: Connectivity and Cultural Encounters in Medieval Eurasia
Researcher (PI) Zaroui POGOSSIAN
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI FIRENZE
Country Italy
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2019-COG
Summary ArmEn seeks to establish a new framework for studying the southern Caucasus, eastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia (CAM) as a space of cultural entanglements between the 9th to 14th centuries. It argues that this region is key to understanding the history of medieval Eurasia but has so far been completely neglected by the burgeoning field of Global Middle Ages. The CAM was on the crossroads of expanding Eurasian empires and population movements, but was removed from major hubs of power. Poly-centrism; political, ethno-linguistic, and religious heterogeneity; frequently shifting hegemonic hierarchies were key aspects of its, nevertheless, inter-connected landscape. This fluidity and complexity left its mark on the cultural products – textual and material – created in the CAM. ArmEn aims to trace shared features in the multi-lingual textual and artistic production of CAM and correlate them to the circulation of ideas and concepts, as well as to real-life interactions, between multiple groups, identifying the locations and agents of entanglements. The large but under-utilised body of Armenian sources to be explored together with those in Arabic, Georgian, Greek, Persian, Syriac, and Turkish, will illuminate cultural entanglements between Muslim and Christian Arabs, Byzantines, Syriac Christians, Georgians, Caucasian Albanians, Turko-Muslim dynasties, Kurds, Iranians, Western Europeans, and Mongols, that inhabited, conquered, or passed through and produced cultural goods in CAM. Evidence from manuscript illuminations and numismatics will provide a material cultural dimension to the analysis. ArmEn will create a trans-cultural vision of the CAM, bridging area studies into a unifying framework, bringing together various disciplinary approaches (philology, literary criticism, religious studies, art history, numismatics, etc.), to build a narrative synthesis in which the dynamics of cross-cultural entanglements in the CAM emerge in their spatial and temporal dimensions.
Summary
ArmEn seeks to establish a new framework for studying the southern Caucasus, eastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia (CAM) as a space of cultural entanglements between the 9th to 14th centuries. It argues that this region is key to understanding the history of medieval Eurasia but has so far been completely neglected by the burgeoning field of Global Middle Ages. The CAM was on the crossroads of expanding Eurasian empires and population movements, but was removed from major hubs of power. Poly-centrism; political, ethno-linguistic, and religious heterogeneity; frequently shifting hegemonic hierarchies were key aspects of its, nevertheless, inter-connected landscape. This fluidity and complexity left its mark on the cultural products – textual and material – created in the CAM. ArmEn aims to trace shared features in the multi-lingual textual and artistic production of CAM and correlate them to the circulation of ideas and concepts, as well as to real-life interactions, between multiple groups, identifying the locations and agents of entanglements. The large but under-utilised body of Armenian sources to be explored together with those in Arabic, Georgian, Greek, Persian, Syriac, and Turkish, will illuminate cultural entanglements between Muslim and Christian Arabs, Byzantines, Syriac Christians, Georgians, Caucasian Albanians, Turko-Muslim dynasties, Kurds, Iranians, Western Europeans, and Mongols, that inhabited, conquered, or passed through and produced cultural goods in CAM. Evidence from manuscript illuminations and numismatics will provide a material cultural dimension to the analysis. ArmEn will create a trans-cultural vision of the CAM, bridging area studies into a unifying framework, bringing together various disciplinary approaches (philology, literary criticism, religious studies, art history, numismatics, etc.), to build a narrative synthesis in which the dynamics of cross-cultural entanglements in the CAM emerge in their spatial and temporal dimensions.
Max ERC Funding
1 999 994 €
Duration
Start date: 2020-10-01, End date: 2025-09-30
Project acronym ArtEmpire
Project An ARTery of EMPIRE. Conquest, Commerce, Crisis, Culture and the Panamanian Junction (1513-1671)
Researcher (PI) Bethany Aram Worzella
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSIDAD PABLO DE OLAVIDE
Country Spain
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2014-CoG
Summary European incursions onto the narrow isthmian pass that divided and connected the Atlantic and Pacific oceans made it a strategic node of the Spanish Empire and a crucial site for early modern globalization. On the front lines of the convergence of four continents, Old Panama offers an unusual opportunity for examining the diverse, often asymmetrical impacts of cultural and commercial contacts. The role of Italian, Portuguese, British, Dutch, and French interests in the area, as well as an influx of African slaves and Asian merchandise, have left a unique material legacy that requires an integrated, interdisciplinary approach to its varied sources. Bones, teeth and artifacts on this artery of Empire offer the possibility of new insights into the cultural and biological impact of early globalization. They also invite an interdisciplinary approach to different groups’ tactics for survival, including possible dietary changes, and the pursuit of profit. Such strategies may have led the diverse peoples inhabiting this junction, from indigenous allies to African and Asian bandits to European corsairs, to develop and to favor local production and Pacific trade networks at the expense of commerce with the metropolis.
This project applies historical, archaeological and archaeometric methodologies to evidence of encounters between peoples and goods from Europe, America, Africa and Asia that took place on the Isthmus of Panama during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Forging an interdisciplinary approach to early globalization, it challenges both Euro-centric and Hispano-phobic interpretations of the impact of the conquest of America, traditionally seen as a demographic catastrophe that reached its nadir in the so-called seventeenth-century crisis. Rather than applying quantitative methods to incomplete source material, researchers will adopt a contextualized, inter-disciplinary, qualitative approach to diverse agents involved in cultural and commercial exchange.
Summary
European incursions onto the narrow isthmian pass that divided and connected the Atlantic and Pacific oceans made it a strategic node of the Spanish Empire and a crucial site for early modern globalization. On the front lines of the convergence of four continents, Old Panama offers an unusual opportunity for examining the diverse, often asymmetrical impacts of cultural and commercial contacts. The role of Italian, Portuguese, British, Dutch, and French interests in the area, as well as an influx of African slaves and Asian merchandise, have left a unique material legacy that requires an integrated, interdisciplinary approach to its varied sources. Bones, teeth and artifacts on this artery of Empire offer the possibility of new insights into the cultural and biological impact of early globalization. They also invite an interdisciplinary approach to different groups’ tactics for survival, including possible dietary changes, and the pursuit of profit. Such strategies may have led the diverse peoples inhabiting this junction, from indigenous allies to African and Asian bandits to European corsairs, to develop and to favor local production and Pacific trade networks at the expense of commerce with the metropolis.
This project applies historical, archaeological and archaeometric methodologies to evidence of encounters between peoples and goods from Europe, America, Africa and Asia that took place on the Isthmus of Panama during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Forging an interdisciplinary approach to early globalization, it challenges both Euro-centric and Hispano-phobic interpretations of the impact of the conquest of America, traditionally seen as a demographic catastrophe that reached its nadir in the so-called seventeenth-century crisis. Rather than applying quantitative methods to incomplete source material, researchers will adopt a contextualized, inter-disciplinary, qualitative approach to diverse agents involved in cultural and commercial exchange.
Max ERC Funding
1 998 875 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-01-01, End date: 2021-06-30
Project acronym ASEA
Project The aftermath of slavery in East Africa
Researcher (PI) Felicitas Maria BECKER
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT GENT
Country Belgium
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2018-COG
Summary Legacies of slavery tend to affect societies deeply, but in inland East Africa have remained little explored. This project aims [1] to establish what happened to the hundreds of thousands of slaves present in mainland East Africa in ca. 1900 and to their descendants over the twentieth century, [2] to explain why the aftermath of slavery is so little discussed in the written sources and historiography of the region, and [3] to trace the social and political legacies of slavery up to the present. It will combine historical and anthropological methods, and, besides post-slavery, addresses questions pertaining to public history, social mobility, marginality and inequality, gender, and understandings of freedom. It pursues them through a series of place-specific case-studies tracing different courses and outcomes within the region, and through comparative work, both between the case studies and with studies on the aftermath of slavery in West Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Americas.
The project is ground-breaking through its long-term time frame, its wide-ranging combination of methods, and in questioning established assumptions, e.g. about the meaning of ‘freedom’ for ex-slaves. It is high-risk in the sense that the field researchers leading the case studies will need good knowledge of Swahili, good social contacts and the flexibility to identify and follow emerging leads wherever they take them. It is feasible because the proposed research program and conceptual frameworks can be adapted as the work develops, and given the obscurity of the regions, groups and questions involved, the resulting gains to knowledge will be major. It is high-gain because it will fill a gaping hole in current knowledge, and establish how people in East Africa coped with the toxic legacy of slavery, which often presents intractable problems, apparently with little disruption. The resulting comparisons will contribute to a better understanding of tensions in other post-slavery societies.
Summary
Legacies of slavery tend to affect societies deeply, but in inland East Africa have remained little explored. This project aims [1] to establish what happened to the hundreds of thousands of slaves present in mainland East Africa in ca. 1900 and to their descendants over the twentieth century, [2] to explain why the aftermath of slavery is so little discussed in the written sources and historiography of the region, and [3] to trace the social and political legacies of slavery up to the present. It will combine historical and anthropological methods, and, besides post-slavery, addresses questions pertaining to public history, social mobility, marginality and inequality, gender, and understandings of freedom. It pursues them through a series of place-specific case-studies tracing different courses and outcomes within the region, and through comparative work, both between the case studies and with studies on the aftermath of slavery in West Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Americas.
The project is ground-breaking through its long-term time frame, its wide-ranging combination of methods, and in questioning established assumptions, e.g. about the meaning of ‘freedom’ for ex-slaves. It is high-risk in the sense that the field researchers leading the case studies will need good knowledge of Swahili, good social contacts and the flexibility to identify and follow emerging leads wherever they take them. It is feasible because the proposed research program and conceptual frameworks can be adapted as the work develops, and given the obscurity of the regions, groups and questions involved, the resulting gains to knowledge will be major. It is high-gain because it will fill a gaping hole in current knowledge, and establish how people in East Africa coped with the toxic legacy of slavery, which often presents intractable problems, apparently with little disruption. The resulting comparisons will contribute to a better understanding of tensions in other post-slavery societies.
Max ERC Funding
1 921 250 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-11-01, End date: 2024-10-31
Project acronym ASIAPAST
Project From herds to empire: Biomolecular and zooarchaeological investigations of mobile pastoralism in the ancient Eurasian steppe
Researcher (PI) Cheryl Ann Makarewicz
Host Institution (HI) CHRISTIAN-ALBRECHTS-UNIVERSITAET ZU KIEL
Country Germany
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2017-COG
Summary The emergence of mobile pastoralism in the Eurasian steppe five thousand years ago marked a unique transformation in human lifeways where, for the first time, people relied almost exclusively on herd animals of sheep, goat, cattle, and horses for sustenance and as symbols. Mobile pastoralism also generated altogether new forms of socio-political organization exceptional to the steppe that ultimately laid the foundation for nomadic states and empires. However, there remain striking gaps in our knowledge of how the pastoralist niche spread and evolved across Eurasia in the past and influenced cultural trajectories that frame the human-herd systems of today. Little is known about the scale of pastoralist movements connected with the initial translocation of domesticated animals, how mobility became embedded in pastoralist life, or how movement contributed to the formation of sophisticated political networks. There is a poor understanding of the character of herd animal husbandry strategies that were central to pastoralist subsistence and how these co-evolved alongside pastoralist dietary intake and ritual use of herd animals. We have a remarkably poor understanding of what pastoralists ate, especially the dietary contribution of dairy products - the quintessential dietary cornerstone food of pastoralist societies.
ASIAPAST addresses these gaps through a biomolecular approach that recovers the dietary and mobility histories of pastoralists and their animals recorded in bones, teeth, and pottery. This project pairs these methods to detailed analyses of the economic and symbolic use of herd animals preserved in zooarchaeological archives. These investigations draw from materials obtained from key sites that capture the transition to mobile pastoralism, its intensification, and emergence of trans-regional political structures located across the culturally connected regions of Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.
Summary
The emergence of mobile pastoralism in the Eurasian steppe five thousand years ago marked a unique transformation in human lifeways where, for the first time, people relied almost exclusively on herd animals of sheep, goat, cattle, and horses for sustenance and as symbols. Mobile pastoralism also generated altogether new forms of socio-political organization exceptional to the steppe that ultimately laid the foundation for nomadic states and empires. However, there remain striking gaps in our knowledge of how the pastoralist niche spread and evolved across Eurasia in the past and influenced cultural trajectories that frame the human-herd systems of today. Little is known about the scale of pastoralist movements connected with the initial translocation of domesticated animals, how mobility became embedded in pastoralist life, or how movement contributed to the formation of sophisticated political networks. There is a poor understanding of the character of herd animal husbandry strategies that were central to pastoralist subsistence and how these co-evolved alongside pastoralist dietary intake and ritual use of herd animals. We have a remarkably poor understanding of what pastoralists ate, especially the dietary contribution of dairy products - the quintessential dietary cornerstone food of pastoralist societies.
ASIAPAST addresses these gaps through a biomolecular approach that recovers the dietary and mobility histories of pastoralists and their animals recorded in bones, teeth, and pottery. This project pairs these methods to detailed analyses of the economic and symbolic use of herd animals preserved in zooarchaeological archives. These investigations draw from materials obtained from key sites that capture the transition to mobile pastoralism, its intensification, and emergence of trans-regional political structures located across the culturally connected regions of Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.
Max ERC Funding
1 999 145 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-04-01, End date: 2023-03-31
