Project acronym DOMESTICATION
Project Domestication in Action - Tracing Archaeological Markers of Human-Animal Interaction
Researcher (PI) Anna-Kaisa SALMI
Host Institution (HI) OULUN YLIOPISTO
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2017-STG
Summary The project will create new methodology for identification and interpretation of animal domestication, with a case study pertaining to reindeer domestication among the indigenous Sámi in northern Fennoscandia. Identification of early animal domestication is complicated due to the limited human control over the animals’ life cycles in early stages of domestication, leading to difficulties in interpreting morphological and genetic data, as well as in using traditional concepts and definitions of domestication. These problems are especially pressing in the study of reindeer domestication, characterized by very limited human control over animals. However, understanding reindeer domestication is important to local communities as well as to the scientific community due to central role of human-reindeer relation as a carrier of culture and identity among many peoples, including Sámi of northern Fennoscandia.
As a novel approach, we propose a focus on interactional events between humans and animals as indications of domestication taking place. We will create methods aimed at identifying interactional events such as draught use and feeding, between reindeer and humans. The methodological package includes physical activity reconstruction through entheseal changes, pathological lesions and bone cross-sections, and analysis of stable isotopes as indicator of animal diet. These methods will then be applied for archaeological reindeer bone finds and the results will be checked against aDNA data to examine changing human-animal relationships among the Sámi. The project has a potential to break new ground in understanding animal domestication as human-animal interaction, a viewpoint pivotal in today’s human-animal studies. Moreover, the project has potential of methodological breakthroughs and creation of transferable methodology. The results will be relevant to local communities and researchers dealing with domestication, human-animal studies and colonial histories.
Summary
The project will create new methodology for identification and interpretation of animal domestication, with a case study pertaining to reindeer domestication among the indigenous Sámi in northern Fennoscandia. Identification of early animal domestication is complicated due to the limited human control over the animals’ life cycles in early stages of domestication, leading to difficulties in interpreting morphological and genetic data, as well as in using traditional concepts and definitions of domestication. These problems are especially pressing in the study of reindeer domestication, characterized by very limited human control over animals. However, understanding reindeer domestication is important to local communities as well as to the scientific community due to central role of human-reindeer relation as a carrier of culture and identity among many peoples, including Sámi of northern Fennoscandia.
As a novel approach, we propose a focus on interactional events between humans and animals as indications of domestication taking place. We will create methods aimed at identifying interactional events such as draught use and feeding, between reindeer and humans. The methodological package includes physical activity reconstruction through entheseal changes, pathological lesions and bone cross-sections, and analysis of stable isotopes as indicator of animal diet. These methods will then be applied for archaeological reindeer bone finds and the results will be checked against aDNA data to examine changing human-animal relationships among the Sámi. The project has a potential to break new ground in understanding animal domestication as human-animal interaction, a viewpoint pivotal in today’s human-animal studies. Moreover, the project has potential of methodological breakthroughs and creation of transferable methodology. The results will be relevant to local communities and researchers dealing with domestication, human-animal studies and colonial histories.
Max ERC Funding
1 490 915 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-02-01, End date: 2023-01-31
Project acronym YMPACT
Project The Yamnaya Impact on Prehistoric Europe
Researcher (PI) Volker HEYD
Host Institution (HI) HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH6, ERC-2017-ADG
Summary Dramatic migrations in the third millennium BC re-shaped Europe, modifying its economy, society, ethnicity and ideological structure for ever. The best incentive proxy are populations that moved from the steppes of Russia, spreading as far west as Hungary, implanting a pastoral economy with widespread innovations. These dynamic people covered thousands of kilometres within a few centuries, and organised direct physical relations over the steppes for the first time. This synchronism is promoted by a society organised to fit to this lifestyle, with new herding techniques, likely use of wagons and domesticated horses, and a protein-rich diet, whose adaptive advantages are evident from the physical record in human skeletons and territorial extensions. This is the Yamnaya complex, whose impact remains visible today in the European gene pool and apparently the propagation of Indo-European languages. This international and interdisciplinary project examines the data from 320 excavated burial mounds and c.1350 burials to calibrate these changes, also against a control sample of supposedly local and neighbouring populations. The archaeological, biological and environmental information allows large, new datasets to be built, whose systematic interrogation and modelling should reveal the formative processes behind these changes. Assessing funeral archaeology, material culture, and exchange pattern defines their culture and impact. Scientific analyses of skeletons expose relations of origin, degrees of consanguinity, diet, and histories of individual mobility over single lifetimes with new precision and replicability. They should also act as proxy datasets for environmental changes using further analytical techniques in a context of landscape evolution. Diachronic patterns within these sets should link with aspects of the internal social dynamics, such as the creation of new status positions, visible later in the Pan-European Corded Ware and Bell Beaker groups.
Summary
Dramatic migrations in the third millennium BC re-shaped Europe, modifying its economy, society, ethnicity and ideological structure for ever. The best incentive proxy are populations that moved from the steppes of Russia, spreading as far west as Hungary, implanting a pastoral economy with widespread innovations. These dynamic people covered thousands of kilometres within a few centuries, and organised direct physical relations over the steppes for the first time. This synchronism is promoted by a society organised to fit to this lifestyle, with new herding techniques, likely use of wagons and domesticated horses, and a protein-rich diet, whose adaptive advantages are evident from the physical record in human skeletons and territorial extensions. This is the Yamnaya complex, whose impact remains visible today in the European gene pool and apparently the propagation of Indo-European languages. This international and interdisciplinary project examines the data from 320 excavated burial mounds and c.1350 burials to calibrate these changes, also against a control sample of supposedly local and neighbouring populations. The archaeological, biological and environmental information allows large, new datasets to be built, whose systematic interrogation and modelling should reveal the formative processes behind these changes. Assessing funeral archaeology, material culture, and exchange pattern defines their culture and impact. Scientific analyses of skeletons expose relations of origin, degrees of consanguinity, diet, and histories of individual mobility over single lifetimes with new precision and replicability. They should also act as proxy datasets for environmental changes using further analytical techniques in a context of landscape evolution. Diachronic patterns within these sets should link with aspects of the internal social dynamics, such as the creation of new status positions, visible later in the Pan-European Corded Ware and Bell Beaker groups.
Max ERC Funding
2 494 209 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-01-01, End date: 2023-12-31
