Mediterranean coastal lifestyles and mobility - an integrated and comparative study of paleo-environmental, archaeological, and social perspectives

Areas: SH

Abstract:
From East to West, from prehistory to the present day, coastal lifestyles represent a quintessential aspect of the human experience in the Mediterranean. The aim of this project is to analyse these coastal lifestyles in detail as well as their relationship to mobility, a further element that has defined and continues to influence profoundly the communities bordering Mare Nostrum. This relationship will be investigated by integrating archaeological and bio-archaeological evidence, and above all by studying coastal settlements in their broader territorial context and in the longue-durée, with specific attention to the pre- and proto-historical phases. This wealth of data will contribute to our reconstruction of adaptation histories of coastal communities in and around the Mediterranean, both past and present. In this respect, the project will entail a number of outreach activities, aimed at increasing the significance of the results for present-day coastal communities in the Mediterranean and beyond. Coastal areas represent fragile but rich ecosystems and have often proved to be a privileged (if not necessary) settlement choice within the Mediterranean basin, which is otherwise bordered by a mountainous and fragmented interior. The importance of these areas for settlement is such that we can speak of coastal “lifestyles”, which can be well defined in the Mediterranean starting from later prehistory and whose significance continues to reverberate to the present day. As transition zones between different ecosystems (marine and terrestrial) and, therefore, extremely sensitive territories to climatic-environmental changes and variations, coastal areas constitute a privileged observatory for the study of the adaptive dynamics and resilience capacities of the communities that populated them already during the Bronze and Iron Ages and subsequently in the historical period. In this regard, mobility and economic interaction, two aspects that are conceptually and methodologically to be considered jointly, emerge as having crucial importance in defining such adaptive changes over time. The aim of this project is to analyze in detail these phenomena by integrating different classes of evidence, especially archaeological and bioarchaeological, but above all through the analysis of coastal settlements and the territorial areas connected to them. This study of human-environmental interaction and mobility in the context of coastal lifestyles will integrate environmental and cultural approaches, focusing on questions such as networks of resource exploitation and “landscape learning”, and explain how cultural landscapes and seascapes stretch and contract at different times in relation to their physical horizons, highlighting their sustainability (or lack thereof) in the long run.

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

Principal Investigator: Francesco Iacono

Partnership: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche

Budget of the University of Bologna: 156.201 EUR

ERC sectors: SH6_3, SH6_4