An interdisciplinary team from the universities of Bern, Oxford and Thessaloniki was awarded a grant of 6.4 million euros from the European Research Council (ERC). The team included researchers from the fields of archaeology and biology. They received one of the highly competitive "ERC Synergy Grants". Aided by studies conducted in the lakes in Greece and in the south of the Balkans, the project should show how the climate, environment and agriculture have developed over the last 10,000 years and what influences these factors have had on each other.
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| Platform for exploration drilling of the University of Bern for sea sediments at Lake Kastoria, 2017 [Credit: © University of Bern/André Lotter] |
The five-year project is named EXPLO (Exploring the dynamics and causes of prehistoric land use change in the cradle of European farming) and will break new ground by combining underwater archaeology with methods used by ecologists, biologists and climate scientists for the very first time. And it employs dynamic computer models in order to reconstruct the interaction between the climate and humans. The aim is to try to understand the adjustment strategies used by early farming communities to react to changing climate and environmental conditions.
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| Example of a sea sediment core (here from Lake Moossee near Bern): yearly layered sediment, around 3800-3600 BC. At that time, a settlement of the western Switzerland Cortaillod Culture was situated near a present-day swimming pool at Lake Moossee [Credit: © University of Bern/Fabian Rey] |
Less than 10 percent of the applications submitted are approved. The "Synergy Grant" was given out for the second time and was awarded to the University of Bern for the first time. EXPLO was initiated by Albert Hafner, professor of prehistoric archaeology, and Willy Tinner, professor of paleoecology, both from Bern. Professors Amy Bogaard and Kostas Kotsakis, from the Universities of Oxford and Thessaloniki respectively, are also involved in the project.
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| Diving work in staked out squares in front of the reconstruction of the Ploča settlement at Lake Ohrid [Credit: © University of Bern/Marco Hostettler] |
Albert Hafner has made a name for himself internationally as a prehistorian and specialist in lakeside settlements and underwater archaeology, amongst other things. The UNESCO World Heritage Site "Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps", comprising of 111 sites in the six Alpine states, is an initiative that Albert Hafner came up with. The shores of roughly a dozen lakes in the South Balkans were settled during the Neolithic period and the Bronze Age.
But in comparison to the excavation sites which have been explored in the Alps over the past 150 years, very little is known about these lakeside settlements. "The excavation sites which have virtually not been studied at all until now are of outstanding scientific value", explains Albert Hafner. "They could prove to be just as important as Neolithic and Bronze Age lakeshore settlements around the Alps."
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| Recovering wooden samples at Ploča [Credit: © University of Bern] |
Excavations and sample collections are planned in the large lakes; Ohrid, Prespa and Orestiada. All of these sites are in an incredibly interesting historico-cultural area: the cradle of European agriculture. Here, agricultural techniques from Western Asia reached Europe over 8,000 years ago. The analysis of lake sediments should show how land use and also how the climate conditions in this region have changed over time.
Underwater archaeological work at Lake Ohrid in a prehistoric settlement with layers from the Neolithic and the Bronze Age
in a water depth of about 4m [Credit: © University of Bern/Marco Hostettler]
Willy Tinner is a world-leading paleoecologist who has studied climate and vegetation history in many regions of the world. He wants to draw useful lessons for the future from the eventful past. "The aim of EXPLO is to understand the complex relationship between the prehistoric people and their environment", says Tinner, "and to gain new information about the long-term consequences that the transition to agriculture had on the ecosystem."
Conversely, the project should also show how early agriculture coped with environmental changes. Knowledge about how human societies reacted to such challenges in the past is becoming increasingly important in view of the effects of climate change happening at the moment.
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| Tagged piles at Ploča [Credit: © University of Bern] |
Teams from the University of Bern performed test drillings and excavations in the lakes in Northern Greece and in Lake Ohrid in 2016 and 2018. These tests showed that the sediment cores collected represented an incredibly rich environmental archive and that the archaeological sites were of the highest quality.
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| Wood samples from Lake Ohrid [Credit: © University of Bern] |
Source: University of Bern [October 23, 2018]
from The Archaeology News Network https://ift.tt/2PUoysS
Breaking News: 6,4 Million Euros for research into the birth of agriculture in Europe - News Paper
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