PALEODEM | Late Glacial and Postglacial Population History and Cultural Transmission in Iberia (c.15,000-8,000 cal BP)

Summary
The aim of this project is to investigate patterns of population history and cultural transmission from the Late Magdalenian to the Late Mesolithic (c.15,000-8,000 cal BP) in South-western Europe. This period witnessed major environmental changes and cultural transformations on settlement distribution, technology and social organisation. Our project specifically addresses two major inter-related research topics: Firstly, to what extent demographic behaviour was driven by environmental factors; and secondly, how did regional population patterns influence cultural transmission processes.
This project develops a new, multi-scale, methodological approach to study population patterns and cultural change between the Late Magdalenian and the Late Mesolithic in the Iberian Peninsula. First, at a local scale, our project will combine new empirical data obtained at open-air residential sites with well dated multi-proxy palaeoenvironmental reconstructions to understand the impact of climate change and hydrological stress on human settlement areas. Then, we will reconstruct population patterns at 4 different Iberian regional units analysing summed probabilities of radiocarbon date distributions from a new audited radiocarbon database. Finally, we will conduct computational network analysis at a macro-regional scale to identify how diachronic variations on hunter-gatherer settlement networks affected the transmission of cultural traits and the spread of technological innovations.
With this multi-step interdisciplinary approach, we aim to provide a chronological-secure framework and spatially explicit context for the interpretation of population history, cultural change, and resilience to environmental changes through from the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene transition to the Middle Holocene in Iberia.
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More information & hyperlinks
Web resources: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/683018
Start date: 01-10-2016
End date: 30-09-2022
Total budget - Public funding: 1 460 385,00 Euro - 1 460 385,00 Euro
Cordis data

Original description

The aim of this project is to investigate patterns of population history and cultural transmission from the Late Magdalenian to the Late Mesolithic (c.15,000-8,000 cal BP) in South-western Europe. This period witnessed major environmental changes and cultural transformations on settlement distribution, technology and social organisation. Our project specifically addresses two major inter-related research topics: Firstly, to what extent demographic behaviour was driven by environmental factors; and secondly, how did regional population patterns influence cultural transmission processes.
This project develops a new, multi-scale, methodological approach to study population patterns and cultural change between the Late Magdalenian and the Late Mesolithic in the Iberian Peninsula. First, at a local scale, our project will combine new empirical data obtained at open-air residential sites with well dated multi-proxy palaeoenvironmental reconstructions to understand the impact of climate change and hydrological stress on human settlement areas. Then, we will reconstruct population patterns at 4 different Iberian regional units analysing summed probabilities of radiocarbon date distributions from a new audited radiocarbon database. Finally, we will conduct computational network analysis at a macro-regional scale to identify how diachronic variations on hunter-gatherer settlement networks affected the transmission of cultural traits and the spread of technological innovations.
With this multi-step interdisciplinary approach, we aim to provide a chronological-secure framework and spatially explicit context for the interpretation of population history, cultural change, and resilience to environmental changes through from the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene transition to the Middle Holocene in Iberia.

Status

CLOSED

Call topic

ERC-CoG-2015

Update Date

27-04-2024
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Horizon 2020
H2020-EU.1. EXCELLENT SCIENCE
H2020-EU.1.1. EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)
ERC-2015
ERC-2015-CoG
ERC-CoG-2015 ERC Consolidator Grant