MALTHUS. Rise and fall cycles of Bronze age populations in Northern Italy

Areas: Archaeology, Prehistory and Protohistory 

Abstract: 

The MALTHUS project aims at identifying the principal indicators of rise and fall of hyper-productive systems of the 3rd and 2nd millennium BCE in the Po plain, integrating multiple sources and scales of evidence, from settlement patterns to bioarchaeological data. 

In the period that comprises the Late Copper Age and the Bronze Age, the plain areas of the central Po valley are characterized by an unprecedented demographic growth, triggered by the introduction of efficient agricultural technologies and by the consequent increase of food production, which gave origin to the well-known Terramare culture. The core-area of the Terramare rapidly arose as prominent hubs of a new ‘globalized’ network that connected continental Europe and the advanced socio-political systems of the Eastern Mediterranean. After a period of great prosperity, however, these settlement systems experienced a rapid decline, which has traditionally been explained with a series of co-occurrent factors (climatic, social, geopolitical), culminating in the crises of the 12th century BC. Other causes related to economy, mobility, nutrition, epidemics have been hypothesized, but never systematically investigated. 

In the framework of the MALTHUS project, we will investigate the demographic fluctuations in the Po plain and neighbouring regions, by tracking specific indicators of “growth” and “crisis”, namely population dynamics, demographic parameters (life expectancy, mortality and fertility rates) nutrition, mobility and diseases. Following the Malthusian theory, our hypothesis is that variations of mortality rates, nutrition patterns, migration rates, and disease frequency are more easily identifiable in economic systems that are more subjected to significant demographic oscillations. MALTHUS’ approach hinges on the integration of these different but strictly interconnected sets of data in order to firmly test which factors effectively contributed to the rise and fall of the Terramare. 

Thanks to the advances of what has been defined as the “Third Science Revolution in Archaeology”, scholars now have the opportunity of employing new methods for the analysis of archaeological and skeletal materials, which enable a more nuanced understanding of the historical cycles of Italian pre-protohistory. In the framework of the MALTHUS project, the research team will apply quantitative models for the analysis of the settlement patterns and carrying capacity, carbon and nitrogen isotopes for the evaluation of nutrition and subsistence strategies, strontium and oxygen isotopes for understanding mobility dynamics, and aDNA for identifying pathogens. The impact of epidemics and the vulnerability of the population to infectious disease, in particular, will be explored in detail, and is expected to generate new reflections in the public debate about growth, crisis, sustainability, and disease diffusion in the present-day world. 

Duration of the project: 28/09/2023 - 28/09/2025 

Principal investigator: Claudio Cavazzuti 

Partnership: 

Università di Torino 

Università di Roma “La Sapienza” 

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche 

Budget of the University of Bologna: 84.476 EUR 

ERC sectors: 

1. SH6_4 Prehistory, palaeoanthropology, palaeodemography, protohistory, bioarchaeology 

2. SH6_3 General archaeology, archaeometry, landscape archaeology 

3. SH7_5 Sustainability sciences, environment and resources