JOINTIME · Connecting Bronze Age Europe: High-precision Radiocarbon Dating 1700-1500 BCE

Connecting Bronze Age Europe: High-precision Radiocarbon Dating 1700-1500 BCE

Through interdisciplinary synergies between archaeology and physics, Jointime proposes to provide the first reliable and fine-meshed radiocarbon grid synchronizing social interactions in critical parts of Europe from Scandinavia over the Carpathian Basin to the Aegean in two crucial centuries between 1700 and 1500 BCE. As it rests on an imprecise macro-chronology the Bronze Age is currently interpreted as a simple and rather static configuration of cores, peripheries and margins. By contrast, Jointime will break new ground in two interlinked thrusts. In the first one, the newest science-based chronological methods will be activated at the AU Department of Physics & Astronomy (AMS centre). In the second one, Jointime will use these novel methods to detail recent ground-breaking research at the AU Department of Archaeology. This research has conceptualised the Bronze Age, not as a world-systemic order, but as bronzization which is an intricately interactive and web-like process in deep time. Firstly, aided by archaeological site-specific and link-indicating data, a fine-meshed grid of radiocarbon dates will be established across the transect from c. 1700 to c. 1500 BCE: this will push Bayesian statistics onto entirely new ground as this methodology has never previously been developed to firmly elucidate culture-geographical links. Secondly, the results will spearhead a historical inquiry into the speed and direction of social and material change. The gained knowledge will be at the crux of Europe’s deep history with relevance for predicting and sequencing the future of our modern globalisation. The results are also cultural heritage with economic and cultural value because the past provides people with a sense of identity, meaning, influence, education and involvement in the present. Transfer to national and transnational policy units (e.g. WHO, FAO, European Globalisation Adjustment Fund) and public is given high priority. O-1: obtain transferable skill to boost project ends and an independent career in academia or industry O-2: establish a high-resolution chronology of bronzization’s consolidation-phase in Scandinavia, the Carpathian Basin and the Aegean respectively, and to add results from in-between these three hotspots O-3: use this high-resolution grid to statistically evaluate, detail and simulate bronzization as process: movement, direction and speed of social and cultural change (incl. the possibility of non-linkages) O-4: to interpret the historical consequences of the results

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз